Entropy
by TKcloud9
Summary: Bruce liked India. It was full of honest people minding their own business, and no one gave him a second glance. It was perfect. And then he sorta kinda semi-adopted his assistant. When a SHIELD agent shows up to ask for his help, of course he can't leave her behind. "She gets American citizenship and scholarship." "Fine." Now if they could survive the aliens, it'd be great.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Hello! Welcome to Entropy. Hopefully I'll be posting a chapter a week, we'll see what Real Life thinks about that. Hope you enjoy!**

Bruce liked India. It was full of honest people minding their own business, and no one gave him a second glance. It was perfect. The only way people knew of him was when he started using his limited medical knowledge to help people. He became known as the friendly doctor. It helped that most of the people he treated didn't speak English, and he only spoke limited Hindi.

He was on his way home from treating a severe case of malaria when his attention was caught by a girl's scream. He debated investigating; it'd been over a year since his last incident and he wanted to keep his record. The girl screamed again, and with a wince he broke into a run. He turned the corner and found two men hitting a girl, trying to get her against a wall.

"Hey!" he yelled.

The two men shared a glance and bolted, leaving the girl to slump to the ground.

Bruce made his way over to the girl. "You okay?" he asked in Hindi, helping her sit up.

She replied in English, "Thank you." She had a split lip and her eye was swollen. She tried to stand up and let out a pained gasp, pressing a hand to her ribs.

"Where do you live?" Bruce asked. "I'll walk you home."

Her gaze dropped. "The girl's hostel where I lived closed down. I have no home." She tugged at her worn tunic, embarrassed.

"No parents, no family?" he pressed.

"My parents are dead and I have no siblings or other family." She looked at him defiantly. "Thank you. I will be fine."

He picked up his bag and made it two steps before he paused. He couldn't just leave her there to sleep in the street. He sighed and turned around. "Come on, kid. You can stay with me while you find a place to live." He realized how that sounded and backtracked hastily. "I mean, I'm a doctor. I want to help you, nothing else, I swear."

She gave him a crooked smile, amused by his awkwardness.

"I'm Bruce," he said, holding out a hand.

She shook his hand lightly. "Jaya."

"Nice to meet you." He helped her back to his two room house, let her use the bathroom to clean up, wrapped her bruised ribs, gave her some ice for her eye, and offered her the bed. She insisted she could sleep just fine on the low, flat couch.

"All right," he said, handing her the extra blanket. "If you need anything, I'm in here."

"Thank you." She curled up on the sofa and pulled the blanket around herself protectively, watching him curiously.

He went to bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling. He knew there was a good chance he'd wake up to find the house robbed and the girl gone, but she was just a kid. So sue him for having a heart. It's not like he had much to steal anyway. And if she was an agent of some sort instructed to bring him in, he knew there was a good chance he'd get tranq'd in his sleep and wake up in a government facility. If he did, well, bully for them. He could literally just rampage out of there. There were other third world countries to choose from.

But he woke up in the morning to the smell of food, and when he walked into the fromt room he found Jaya up and about serving breakfast. "Wow."

"Tea?" she asked, pouring a rich smelling chai into a cup.

"You didn't have to make breakfast."

"It was the least I could do."

He sat down, and found that she was a pretty good cook. "How do you know English so well?" he asked.

"My father was American," she said quietly, biting her lip.

"Oh." He changed the subject. "Do you have a job?"

"No."

"How old are you anyway?"

"Sixteen."

"You look older than that." He'd thought she was eighteen, at least.

"Good." She reached for a plate and winced.

"Easy on those ribs," he scolded lightly.

They cleaned up in easy silence, and he got ready to go out. "I'll be back at six-ish."

She handed him a naan wrap folded in brown paper. "All right."

He smiled at her and left, tucking the lunch into his bag.

AV-AV-AV

When he came back it was to an immaculate little house, the floor shining. And someone was singing a soft Hindi tune. "Jaya?" he called.

She came around the back. "Namaste, Bruce."

"How was your day?" he asked, as he put his things away. She'd even cleaned the cupboards.

"I looked for work. The spice shop down the street told me to come back when my face is healed and they would hire me."

"Well that's good."

She looked at him hesitantly. "But it will take me time to make enough to find a place to rent."

He nodded and looked around at the clean house and the simmering curry. "Well, if you keep up the house and teach me how to cook, I don't see why you can't stay here."

Her eyes filled with happy tears. "You mean it?"

"Sure. Why not?"

She threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. He stiffened, unused to the contact. It was a two-second hug, and then she drew back, embarrassed. "Thank you."

He smiled at her. "You're welcome."

AV-AV-AV

Her face healed, and Jaya got the job in the spice shop. She came home every day with little paper twists full of spices, and used them to season whatever small meals they shared for breakfast and dinner. Bruce still couldn't get used to coming home and finding fresh flowers in the house and food on the table. It was nice, and he listened tolerantly over dinner as Jaya chattered to him about her day in the shop in a mixture of Hindi and English. She helped him with his Hindi, as well, and she would take messages from clients when he was out of the house. She didn't know who he was, not really, and she treated him just like any other person, calling him 'uncle.' As the days passed, Bruce realized he was getting quite attached to the girl, as if she was the daughter he'd never be able to have. The thought made him sad, and also made him wary. It was dangerous to get attached.

One evening they were eating dinner when a boy came to the door. "Doctor, doctor," he said urgently. "Mere ma bemar hai," he said. My mother is sick.

"What's wrong with her?"

"Fever and vomiting," the boy said. "Many people sick, my brother, our neighbors."

"An outbreak of some sort," Bruce said grimly. He looked at Jaya. "Would you feel comfortable coming with me? I might need another pair of hands."

She nodded hesitantly.

Their work lasted all night as they cared for the sick, and as they worked, Bruce realized Jaya had quite a knack for soothing people. She treated the feverish people tenderly, humming well-known tunes as she bathed them with cold water and tried to get them to drink boiled water or weak teas.

One day turned into two, then three. Whatever it was, was spreading. A few people had already recovered, but they were still weak. Bruce had Jaya running all over the city to get medicine and supplies.

She had just come back with more medicine when a small girl ran up the stairs to Bruce. "Doctor!" she cried.

"Go away, child, can't you see there's sick people here?" one of the grandmas said.

"What is it?" Bruce asked, kneeling down to talk to the girl.

"Mere baba," she half sobbed, babbling in quick, anxious Hindi.

He looked up at Jaya. "What'd she say?"

"Her father's sick, fever."

"Like these?" Bruce asked, pointing to the others.

The little girl nodded and tugged at his sleeve. "Please," she begged.

He nodded. "Jaya, stay here and tend to these, a teaspoon every four hours like I told you. I'll be back soon, okay?"

"Okay."

The little girl led him to the outskirts of town, into an old house - and crawled out the back window. He sighed. "Shoulda gotten paid first," he told himself, annoyed.

"You know, for a man who's supposed to be avoiding stress, you picked a really bad spot," a woman's voice said in perfect, unaccented English.

He tensed, and then forced himself to relax. "Avoiding stress isn't the secret," he replied evenly. He shouldn't have come here. But there was no way out of it now.

"Then what is it? Yoga?" the woman asked.

"You brought me to the edge of the city," he said, analyzing. He peered out the window. "I, uh, assume this place is surrounded."

"Just you and me," she told him, managing to look completely wide-eyed and innocent.

"And your actress buddy? They start that young?" he asked, still annoyed that he hadn't managed to spot the ruse.

"I did," the secret agent replied honestly.

He raised an eyebrow. "And who are you?"

"Natasha Romanoff."

He gave her a weary look. He hadn't slept in forty eight hours and he really didn't want to turn into the Other Guy, as it was exhausting. "Are you here to kill me, Ms Romanoff? Because that's not going to work out for everyone."

"No no, of course not. I'm here on behalf of SHIELD."

He stifled a sigh. "SHIELD. How'd they find me?"

"We never lost you, Doctor. We kept our distance. But now we need you to come in."

He smirked. "What if I say no?"

She replied with a smirk of her own. "I'll persuade you."

"And what if the Other Guy says no?" he asked slowly.

"You've been over a year without an incident, I don't think you want to break that streak." She turned to grab a phone of some sort. "And I'm sure you don't want to lose your little housemaid if you have to move to another country."

He tensed for real this time. "You leave her alone," he said. "She's got nothing to do with this."

"I never said she did." She showed him a blue cube on the phone screen. "This is the Tesseract."

"What does Fury want me to do, swallow it?" he asked wryly. He probably could. He listened to her talk about gamma radiation, and raised his voice, testing her. She didn't shoot him, which was nice. "All right," he said. "You've convinced me."

"Good."

He thought about Jaya. "But we're bringing Jaya. She's half American. She gets dual citizenship and financial help, or no deal."

Natasha nodded. "I thought you'd say that. Come on doc, we've got a helicopter waiting."

There were SHIELD agents everywhere, and one of them had Jaya by the arm. She looked terrified and defiant all at once, and as soon as she saw him, she ran to his side. "Bruce, what's going on?" she asked, clinging to his arm.

He took her hand. "It's a long story, kiddo."

"Dr. Banner," Natasha called, waving him over.

Jaya frowned at him. "You're leaving?"

"You can come with me, if you want," he offered. "You could start a new life in America, go to school, college, get a good job."

She glanced at the SHIELD agents. "You work for the government?"

"Not really. I'm more of a consultant at the moment."

She stared at him, wide eyed. "Who are you?"

He sighed. "I'll tell you everything, if you come with me. If not, I've got to go."

She looked from him to the city and back again. "I have nothing left there. I'll come with you."

"Good girl. Come on."

They got in the helicopter, and Natasha smiled at the girl. "Hi. I'm Natasha."

"Jaya." She scooted closer to Bruce.

They took a helicopter to a private plane, were provided with a shower cubicle, clean clothes and a full meal. "Where are we headed?"

"The Atlantic."

Bruce nodded and looked over at Jaya. She'd eaten and was now sitting in the corner, her nose pressed to the window as she watched the plane lift off. She was wearing jeans and an embroidered tunic, her long hair neatly combed out to finish drying. She stifled a yawn, and he realized that she'd gone almost three days without sleep. He went over to her. "Jaya, we've still got a long way to go. You can sleep if you want."

She glanced over at Natasha and then back at Bruce, questioning.

"It'll be okay," he assured her. "Sleep. You've been working hard." He found a blanket in a compartment and shook it out, laying it over her. "I'll wake you when we're landing," he promised.

She nodded and closed her eyes. She was asleep in minutes, her head pillowed on her arm. Asleep, she looked just as young as she really was.

"You've got quite the parental manner," Natasha observed, as when Bruce returned to his seat across from her. "You gonna adopt her?"

Bruce shook his head. "She deserves a parent who won't run the risk of demolishing whatever city she settles down in." He turned to the papers on the table and flipped it open to reveal a picture of Captain America. "What's this?"

"Files on the rest of the team."

"Oh, there's a team now?" he asked, putting on his glasses. "Interesting."

He read most of the files, and even managed to get in an hour or two of sleep. He was shaken awake by Natasha. "We're here," she murmured.

He stretched and looked out the window. They were landing on what looked like an aircraft carrier. He got up and went over to Jaya. "We're landing," he said, carefully jostling her shoulder.

She blinked awake gradually, and looked out the window. "A ship?" she asked.

"Yes."

She put her new sneakers on and started to braid her hair. "When we land, then will you tell me what's going on?" she asked.

Bruce coughed guiltily. "Uh, yeah."

"And we'll get breakfast," Natasha assured them. "Buckle up."

They landed, and climbed out onto the busy deck of the carrier. Jaya stuck close enough to Bruce to be his shadow, as Natasha led them across the deck. "Captain Rogers," she called to a tall blond man in a leather jacket.

He turned. "Agent Romanoff. And you must be Dr. Banner."

"Captain Rogers."

"Word is you can find the cube."

"Is that the only thing you heard about me?"

"The only one I care about," Rogers replied firmly. He glanced at Jaya curiously. "Who's this?"

"My assistant," Bruce replied after a second.

"Miss," Rogers said, smiling at the girl.

She blushed and looked down.

"Gentlemen if you'll step inside," Natasha said, "It's going to get a little hard to breathe."

Suddenly giant engine turbines began to appear, causing a rush of water.

"Is this a submarine?" Rogers asked, awed.

"They want me in a pressurized metal container?" Bruce asked, astonished. This was not good.

The carrier began to rise.

"Oh no, this is much worse," Bruce said, laughing at the sheer craziness of it all. He turned to follow Natasha inside, Jaya at his heels.

They went in, and met Agent Coulson and Director Fury. "If you'll follow me, we can find you a room," Coulson told Jaya.

"Uh, no," Bruce said, firmly, "she stays with me."

"She's your assistant," Coulson said, shrugging.

Natasha led them to a lab. "We got all the toys, doc." She showed Jaya the break room that was a few doors down, and left them to it.

"So," Jaya said, returning with two cups of tea and sitting on the counter in front of Bruce's computer. "You promised you would tell me what was going on."

Bruce sighed. "Okay. Uh, oh boy." He rubbed at his forehead. "I'm not just a doctor of medicine. I'm actually an expert in gamma radiation."

"Then why were you hiding in India?" Jaya asked.

"Because an experiment went wrong."

"Someone died?" she guessed.

"No. I changed." He pulled up a picture of the Other Guy. "When I get angry, I turn into, uh, this Other Guy."

She stared at the picture for a long moment, looking back and forth from Bruce to the picture. "Did you do something bad?" she asked after a moment.

"Besides breaking Harlem?" he asked wryly. "People were after me, so I left. I went to India, and I focused on helping people."

"And then you found me."

"Yes."

She nodded slowly. "But you are still Bruce?"

"Yes. Nothing is changed. I just," he sighed. "I can't guarantee your safety here. The whole world is in danger right now, and I don't know if I can protect you."

She gave him a tiny smile and patted his arm. "You don't have to worry about me, Bruce."

"You don't mind?" he asked hesitantly.

"I wish you had told me earlier," she said, a frown wrinkling her forehead, "but I don't mind very much. You never got angry at me, not even when I dropped your blood pressure cuff, so, I trust you." She gave him a bright smile and pointed at another screen. "What are we working on?"

He smiled. This could work.


	2. Chapter 2

**A.N: Hullo again.**

He explained the basics of what they were trying to do, and she organized computer files and brought tea and snacks while he worked, and let him talk out his ideas.

"It's late," Banner realized, a few hours later. "You can head to bed if you'd like."

Jaya shook her head. "I don't want to leave you here alone." She picked at her fingernails uneasily.

"And you don't want to be alone either?" Bruce guessed.

She nodded.

"All right."

She eventually curled up in the corner of the lab behind a desk, a blanket tucked around her, and fell asleep to the steady hum of the computers. When she woke up a few hours later, there was another man in the lab, one with a goatee and a Black Sabbath T-shirt, working busily on the screens. A blue and gold scepter was sitting on the desk. "Where's Doctor Banner?" she asked, standing up.

The man gave a startled yell and turned around, holding out a stylus as if it was a weapon. "For crying out loud!" he said, grabbing at his chest. "Where did you come from? You're gonna give me a heart attack, kid."

"Who are you?" she asked warily.

"What do you mean who am I? Which rock have you been living under?" he retorted, staring at her.

She stared back at him. "Where is Doctor Banner?" she repeated.

"Jolly Green is just getting some tea. Who are you, kid? Don't tell me SHIELD is hiring straight out of high school."

She frowned at him silently.

He sighed. "I'm Tony Stark." He raised an eyebrow at her blank stare. "Iron Man? Billionaire? Ring any bells?"

She shook her head.

"All right, so who are you?"

Bruce came back at that moment, carrying two cups of tea. "Oh, you're awake." He handed her a mug. "I see you've met Mr. Stark."

"Who is this?" Tony asked, eyes lighting up. "I didn't know you had a daughter."

Bruce shook his head. "This is Jaya."

"Nice to meet you, kiddo."

"You too," she replied politely, even though she was still eyeing him cautiously.

"You adopting, now?" Tony asked his fellow scientist.

"Nope. She's my assistant."

"Hm." Tony gave Jaya a critical glance and returned to his work.

Jaya sat on the counter and sipped at her tea, watching the two men work. After a while her gaze turned to the scepter on the table. "Bruce?"

"Hm?"

"What is this?" She reached out to touch the sleek gold lines.

"Don't touch that!" both of them yelled, making her flinch backwards.

"I'm sorry," Bruce apologized, giving her a side hug, and pulling her away from the scepter at the same time. "But it's dangerous and we don't know what it does really."

"Except the last person who was touched by it got turned into a brainwashed puppet, so keep away from it," Tony finished, giving her a look of concern. "Okay, kiddo?"

She nodded. "Where did it come from?"

"Did you not tell her anything?" Tony asked, raising an eyebrow at Bruce.

"There wasn't time."

Tony sighed. "All right, short stuff."

"I'm not short," she protested.

"Sure, miss 5'2" and a 1/4." He smirked. "So, there was this guy named Loki who's insane, and-"

Between the two of them and Agent Romanoff who came in later, Jaya got the whole story, and went back to sitting behind the desk as she processed that the world really was in danger and they might all die at the hands of aliens. Real, proper aliens, not the computer puppets from the movies.

And then Captain Rogers came in again, and he was mad. Everyone who showed up to yell was angry, and they got angrier and angrier and Jaya was hiding under the desk in terror until suddenly Bruce was holding the dangerous golden scepter and everyone was staring at him and Jaya was silently praying to all the gods that ever were that Bruce would not turn into a brainwashed puppet.

"Put the scepter down, Banner," the captain ordered.

Bruce came back to himself, and dropped the scepter on the table. There was a beeping noise, and Jaya looked up, interested. The results were back from the computer. It was a place in America- Suddenly there was a loud boom and a whoosh, and everything went black.

"Jaya! Jaya!" A loud voice pierced the thick fog in her mind, and she dragged her eyes open. Warm, concerned blue eyes stared back at her. "Jaya, can you hear me?"

"Captain Rogers?" she asked, her tongue feeling thick and cottony.

"Yes." He helped her to her feet.

She gasped as a ripple of pain spread from her ribs down to her feet and she toppled.

He scooped her up in his arms and headed off down the corridor. "Doctor Banner has turned into the Hulk and Loki's men are attacking," he informed her as they swept through the corridors. "I'm taking you to the med bay and you will stay there until it is safe, all right?"

"All right." She was dropped carefully onto a bed in the bustling medical bay, and Captain Rogers swept out again. She curled up slightly, trying to breathe against the pain in her ribs. She must have been thrown against the desk when the explosion happened. She hoped everyone was all right.

A tremendous roar filtered through the ship. Bruce. That was Bruce, as the Other Guy. The Hulk. He must be terrified.

Jaya winced in sympathy.

A nurse came over to her. "Are you shot or broken?" she demanded.

"No." Jaya knew she was only bruised, and even now the pain was receding. She carefully got off the bed. "Let me help, I was a doctor's assistant."

The nurse gave her a doubtful look but didn't argue. "Bandages, gauze, and antiseptic in drawers beneath each bed," she said. "Go on."

Jaya tried to ignore the shouting, gunfire, and roars echoing through the helicarrier as she worked, cleaning surface wounds and diagnosing broken limbs, giving comfort to people in pain. She tried to ignore the fear in her own mind as she pressed hard on a gushing wound in someone's thigh. Please be okay please be okay please be okay… She watched in awe as the wound began to heal right before her very eyes.

The agent stared at her and she stared back at him, astonished. "You a superpower?" he asked, touching his leg gingerly.

"Are you?"

"No."

She checked his other wounds. "I don't know, then, but you'll live. Go."

"Thanks." He rolled off the bed and out the doors.

She stared at her hands. They looked normal. There had been no glow, nothing to suggest she had superpowers like Bruce or Thor or Steve.

"Hey kid, over here!"

She snapped out of it and went to the next casualty. Whatever this was, it could only help. She used her newfound powers to heal the serious injuries and when the doctors stared at her, slack-jawed, she could only shrug.

Suddenly a med team came in with an emergency patient. It was the nice agent from before-Coulson. His chest had a gaping hole in it.

"You, super girl," the lead doctor barked, as the trauma unit worked over him. "We need to repair his heart, can you do it?"

Jaya stared at the blood everywhere, and swallowed hard. She pressed her hands down on the man's chest and focused. The entire world narrowed down to his heart almost literally in her hands. Somehow, she could feel the tissue knitting itself together. There was a terrible silence, and then suddenly he gave a great gasping heave and alarms and monitors began to go off.

She was shoved away and the other doctors surged in to finish saving his life. Jaya stared in shock at the man who was now alive because of her. One of the nurses grabbed her, and eased her down to a chair. "Just breathe," the nurse soothed, "you did good."

Jaya suddenly realized that she was hyperventilating and the whole room was spinning, her body trembling from exhaustion. She pressed shaking hands together and closed her eyes for a few minutes, trying to find her balance. After a minute she looked up, prepared, and went to the next patient. She worked for a few more minutes, healing gunshot wounds and broken limbs, and then two people came in. One was Agent Romanoff, carrying an unconscious agent on her shoulder. "I hit him really hard," Romanoff said, laying the man down gently. "Needs an MRI before he wakes up. We don't know if his mind's been tampered with."

"He's got some brain damage," the doctors reported after a minute. "Someone got in there and messed him up pretty good." One of them looked at Jaya. "Can you repair neural tissue?"

She hadn't tried it, so she had no evidence to suggest otherwise. "I think so."

"Give it a shot." The doctor went off to more immediate injuries, leaving a nurse to supervise.

Agent Romanoff stared at Jaya, her expression inscrutable. "I didn't know you had a superpower."

"Me either," Jaya replied nervously. "It just sort of happened."

"You're not touching him," the redhead stated, looking dangerous yet vulnerable as she stepped in front of Barton's unconscious form.

The nurse stepped forward. "Agent Romanoff, she saved Agent Coulson. She basically brought him back to life. She can help Agent Barton."

Natasha stepped back after a moment. "Hurt him, and I will kill you," she warned.

Jaya nodded, and stepped forward to put her hands on either side of the man, Barton's, face. She closed her eyes, and suddenly it was like she was sucked into a web of light and connections. All around her were blue tendrils of light and shattered bridges of pink stuff. Am I seeing his brain? She asked mentally, and nearly withdrew in disgust. But the blue stuff was still there, and it looked like it was rotting the pink stuff. She took a deep breath and dove in. Whatever her power was, it was getting rid of the blue stuff and repairing the pink and lightning connections. It almost looked like it was rewinding to a previous state. That was interesting.

She realized her power was dwindling, and pulled herself together. With one last push, the blue energy was gone, and she fell backwards out of her trance-like state, nearly falling to the floor. She was caught by Agent Romanoff. "It's done," she gasped, trying desperately not to pass out.

"All the brain damage has been reversed," the doctor confirmed, coming over to look at the scans.

Jaya caught a glimpse of Natasha's thankful gaze, and blacked out.


	3. Chapter 3

When she came to, Captain Rogers was standing over her. "Jaya?" His uniform now looked slightly charred.

Jaya groaned and tried to sit up. She couldn't do it without assistance, and he carefully eased her up. "Where's Bruce?" she asked, once the floor stopped spinning.

Rogers winced. "He, uh, fell off the helicarrier."

She gaped. "He fell off the helicarrier?" she repeated in disbelief.

"Yes." Hastily he added, "But don't worry, he survived."

"Okay…" She grabbed at her head. "What's going on?"

"We're going to New York to confront Loki. We figured that anyone who can heal brain damage and stop bleeding ought to be on our side. Are you up for it?"

She nodded hesitantly.

"Good for you." He helped her off the bed. "Come on. Agent Romanoff will help you suit up."

He led her to a locker room, where Agents Romanoff and Barton were gearing up with various weapons. Both of them gave her a grim smile. "Are you all right?" she asked Barton.

He nodded. "Thanks to you, kid, I'm getting there."

She was given a bulletproof jacket and combat boots.

Natasha held out a gun. "Do you know how to use this?"

Jaya shook her head.

"All right." Natasha gave her a quick crash course and they were out the door.

They boarded a quinjet and headed to New York, following Iron Man's lead. There were aliens in the street. Real aliens in the street, shooting things and people.

"Does your healing thing work in reverse?" Clint asked, as they left the safety of the quinjet.

"I don't know," she replied nervously.

"Now would be a good time to try," Clint said grimly, and pushed her out of the way as the Chitauri attacked.

Jaya threw her hands up to protect her face, and before their eyes the Chitauri fighter crumbled into dust. She let out a squeak of surprise.

"Good, that's good," Natasha said, patting her on the shoulder. "Just keep doing that."

Thor joined the fight soon, and then Bruce appeared, rolling up on a motorcycle. "What are you doing here?" he asked Jaya, astonished.

"I have powers?" Jaya half-asked, shrugging.

"What?"

"I don't know how it happened."

"Are you a mutant?" Bruce asked.

"I don't think so. But I don't know."

"Hm. A lot of them were wiped out in the epidemic, but maybe India was spared... your mom came from a village, right?"

"Later guys," Clint said tersely.

"Right. Sorry."

Tony spoke up on the comms. "Tell Banner to suit up, I'm bringing the party to you."

They all stared at the giant flying whale cyborg worm thing. "I don't see how that's a party," Natasha commented.

"Dr. Banner, now might be a really great time to get angry," Steve said.

"That's my secret Cap," Bruce replied, giving them a grin. "I'm always angry." And he Hulked out just in time to punch the big worm thing in the nose.

Jaya cringed as the enormous body flopped over nearly on top of them. Before she could do anything she was scooped up by a large hand and held to a warm green chest as the leviathan crashed over them. She looked up into the Hulk's brown eyes. "Thank you."

"Hulk save tiny," he rumbled, letting her go. "Tiny be safe." He turned to the others.

Cap gave out orders, falling in as the team's leader. "Hulk, smash."

"And me?" Jaya asked, as everyone scattered.

He frowned. "I need you to help evacuate. If there's people hurt, help them. If there's aliens attacking them, stop them."

"Got it." She dissolved a Chitauri about to blast the captain in the back.

"Thanks."

She nodded, and headed to the nearest building. Evacuate people. Help the injured. She could do that. She cleared banks and office buildings, healing broken bones and concussions, trying to send them in the opposite direction of the fighting. The Avenger's chatter faded to the background in her ear as time passed.

She had to cross the street to get to the next block of buildings, and dove through the chaos, dissolving Chitauri as she went. Then she saw it. The stroller, with a screaming baby-directly in the path of a crumbling wall. Without thinking, she ran for the child, holding her hands out, willing the wall to dissolve into dust or slow down or something. Instead, it began to fall backwards, becoming whole again and reattaching to the building.

Jaaya didn't give herself the luxury of wondering about her powers. She grabbed the baby and ran. The little girl was all right, only terrified, and Jaya passed her to the first police officer she saw. "Go, go!" she urged.

"I can close it!" came over the comm. "Does anyone copy? I can close the wormhole!"

"Do it!"

"No wait! I've got a nuke coming in, and I know just where to put it."

Jaya ran back towards the epicenter, Stark Tower. She found Cap and Thor, and watched as Iron Man took the missile right into the heart of the wormhole. They waited breathlessly. Then, "close it."

"But-"

"Close it."

Natasha closed the wormhole, and just in time, Iron Man fell through the hole.

"He's not slowing down," Jaya observed.

The Hulk solved that problem, snatching the suit from the sky and laying him on the ground. He roared, and Tony gasped back into consciousness. "Please tell me nobody kissed me."

Jaya started to laugh. "We won," she said breathlessly, falling into the Hulk's side. "You actually saved the world."

"Tiny help," the Hulk said, "big help." He hugged her gently.

"We're not done yet," Steve reminded them, interrupting Tony's schwarma monologue.

So that's how Jaya took the elevator up to Tony's penthouse, crammed in with everyone else as it trundled to the top. She took the time to heal everyone's most painful injuries.

"How are you doing that anyway?" Tony asked, hovering over her as she healed a gash in Clint's arm.

Jaya shrugged. "I don't know."

"It works though," Clint said, ruffling her hair. "She saved me, and Coulson."

Steve and Tony shared a glance. "Fury told us he died," Steve said bluntly.

Jaya's jaw dropped. "But he couldn't have! He was alive when I left!"

"He showed us the cards from his jacket," Tony said, reluctant to have hope.

The two spies shared a glance. "Coulson keeps them in his locker," Clint said. "Never carries 'em around."

"Fury played us," Tony said angrily. "That one-eyed-"

Steve clapped a hand over the billionaire's mouth, shooting a warning glance at Jaya. "But it worked," he said. "We came together as a team. It's no excuse though."

"No it is not," Thor agreed, frowning.

While the others confronted Loki and locked him up, Jaya curled up on the sofa, exhausted. She could see the whole island from here. Her first day in a new country and she helped save the world. She giggled again faintly. The universe was very strange.

"Jaya?" It was Bruce, back to his normal self, wearing an ill-fitting shirt and jacket from Tony's closet. "We're going to go eat. You hungry?"

"Yes." She yawned. She was ravenous. She dragged herself to her feet and followed them all back into the elevator. "But afterwards we can sleep?" she asked, leaning against Bruce during the ride down.

"As long as you want," he promised.

She fell asleep halfway through her meal, and the next thing she knew she was being carried. "Whuh?"

"Rest, young maiden," Thor's deep voice said reassuringly. "You have earned it." And she was asleep again.


	4. Chapter 4

When she woke up, it was light outside. She sat up gingerly, every bone and muscle in her body sore. She stretched, equally gingerly, and frowned at her wrinkled, dirty, two-day old clothes.

"Ms Potts has provided some clothes for you," a voice said out of thin air.

She jumped, startled, and glanced around wildly. "Who's there?"

"I am JARVIS, Mr. Stark's electronic butler," the voice said soothingly. "He has instructed me to assist you in whatever you may require."

"Where are the clothes?" she asked timidly. "Can I take a shower?"

"Of course miss. May I have your full name for the records?"

"Jaya Marcus."

"Thank you Miss Marcus. Clean clothes and a towel are in the en suite bathroom, as well as whatever toiletries you may need."

She went into the bathroom, found the tiled king sized tub and shower, rich body washes, and makeup set out on the counters. There was also a pile of clean clothes and underwear still in its price tags. How could a shirt cost that much? She resolved not to get them dirty or wrinkled, ever.

She showered, dressed, didn't dare touch the most expensive makeup she'd ever seen, and slipped on a new pair of sneakers. "Excuse me, Mr. Jarvis, sir," she started.

"Captain Rogers and Thor are in the common area," he supplied. "If you'll take the elevator one floor down, miss."

"Thank you." She headed downstairs and found a spacious living area, dining room, and giant kitchen. The two blond men were in the process of making pancakes.

"Oh, you're up," Steve said, smiling at her. "Did you sleep all right?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Any injuries?"

"No. You?"

Both of them shook their heads. "Super serum," Steve explained.

"Asgardian," Thor added.

Jaya nodded. "Can I help with breakfast?"

Steve grabbed a plate and served her a small stack. "We've got it. There's coffee in the pot."

"Thank you." She started to eat slowly, still exhausted. "Where are the others?"

"Everyone else is still asleep, Miss Marcus," JARVIS supplied. "Agent Romanoff seems to be stirring."

Sure enough, Agent Romanoff came through the door half an hour later, dressed and immaculate, her face bare of makeup but somehow looking ridiuclously put together.

"Pancakes?" Steve asked politely.

"Sure," Natasha said, sitting down next to Jaya.

"So what happens next?" Jaya asked, after she finished eating.

"No idea," Steve said, being the only one without a mouthful of food. "And since Stark's not awake yet-"

"Present!" Tony said, walking, or rather limping in. He still looked exhausted, but more awake than yesterday. "However, I don't know what's on the agenda either. Press junkets, I'm assuming. The media's going crazy over this. Pepper's gonna have a fit."

"No press," Natasha interrupted. "SHIELD doesn't want the public knowing any more than they have to."

"Good, I hate reporters," Tony said, with a sigh of relief.

"You?" Steve asked, skeptical.

"Well, I love what they do for my rep, but personally no, I don't like reporters." Tony looked at Jaya. "What about you?"

"I don't know," Jaya replied, "I never met one."

"You will, especially if you stay part of the superhero gang," Tony assured her. "So, where are you going to go after we finish this?"

"I don't know."

"You'll have time to figure it out," Steve assured her, shooting Tony a look.

"What?" Tony retorted. "It's never too early to start planning her future."

"I thought you didn't plan," Steve jibed.

"Normally I don't, but with aliens falling out of the sky, I'm revisiting the concept."

Jaya glanced from one to the other. "You don't like each other much, do you?" she asked, amused.

"No," they both replied.

Thor rolled his eyes. "Brothers rarely like each other," he informed Jaya.

"We're not brothers," Stark said. "We are nothing alike."

"And yet we all saved the world together," Jaya said, "you've got to admit that everyone's a little bonded now."

"I admit nothing," Tony said.

"So that offer to let Banner and Jaya stay with you was nothing but talk?" Natasha asked, raising an eyebrow.

Tony took a sip of coffee. "Okay, well, that one I'll admit. We were meant to be Science Bros, and Miss Bollywood here needs to go to college. I will not admit that renovating the tower to have a floor for each of the Avengers is any sign of bonding. Not at all."

"Wait, what?" came a groggy voice. Bruce shuffled out of the elevator, his hair still mesy. He poured himself a giant cup of coffee.

"Yeah, what?" Steve added.

"Well, if we're gonna save the world again we're gonna need a base. And I refuse to work from Fury's flying circus."

"Hey, don't knock the circus," another sleepy voice retorted. Clint went straight to the coffee and drank it right out of the pot. "That's good stuff," he muttered, taking another swig out of the pot.

"Clint, that's disgusting," Natasha retorted.

Jaya put her head down on the table, feeling exhausted.

"Jaya?" Bruce asked, touching her shoulder lightly.

"Don't feel good," she muttered. "Tired."

He picked up her wrist. "Pulse is too fast." He touched her forehead. "Skin's clammy, you've got a fever, why didn't you say anything?" He looked up at Tony. "This tower of yours have a medical wing?"

"Yeah, a few floors down." Tony looked genuinely worried. "JARVIS, prep the floor."

Jaya attempted to stand, but her muscles wouldn't hold her. "Bruce?" she asked, scared.

"Hang on kiddo," Bruce said, squeezing her hand. He looked at Steve. "Would you-"

Steve picked her up easily and turned to Tony. "Where?"

"This way."

They all followed Tony down to the medical wing which was part lab, part high-tech hospital. "I provide excellent healthcare," Tony said distractedly. He pointed to a bed under a scanner. "Put her there. JARVIS?"

"Scanning," JARVIS reported, as soon as Steve placed Jaya on the bed. She closed her eyes, hovering between awake and unconscious. "Anomaly found." A 3D scan showed up on the glass screen. There was a small splinter of glowing blue lodged in her chest, in between a pair of ribs. "It appears to be a shard from one of the Phase 2 weapons."

"When she fell on the table during the explosion?" Bruce wondered.

"Her ribs were bruised," Steve remembered. "That's when it must have happened."

"So she's got a piece of the Tesseract energy in her?" Clint asked, jaw dropping.

"Yes. Her body's continually trying to repair around it, but it can't get the splinter out," Bruce said, putting his glasses on to peer at the screen. "It's lodged behind a rib."

"Her system has reached it's maximum tolerance level," JARVIS reported. "She has expended too much energy trying to remove the splinter."

"Can we get it out?" Steve asked, wincing in sympathy.

"We have to, before her levels crash," Bruce said. "Tony, do you have a surgeon?"

"They're all loaned out to the hospitals right now. It'd take too long to recall one. Can't you do it?"

"Well I guess I'm going to have to," Bruce said grimly.

"Let me help," Natasha offered. "I've done my fair share of field surgeries."

Bruce nodded. "Thank you."

"If her regenerative capabilities are anything like mine you'll have to do it quickly before her skin starts healing around the instruments," Steve said.

They all turned to stare at him. "What?" Tony asked, hoping he hadn't inferrred what he thought he had from what he heard.

Steve's face looked stoic. "Just do it quickly. And check that the anaesthesia works before you, uh, cut."

"Steve," Tony gasped, appalled. "That was not in your file."

The super soldier shifted uncomfortably. "Nobody needed to know."

"Okay, anyways," Bruce said, drawing the attention off the soldier, "anybody not helping, clear out." He cleared his throat. "JARVIS, where's the instruments?"

"In the cabinet to your left, already sterilized."

"Anaesthesia?" Natasha asked.

Thor dug a small flask from an inner pocket. "This is a powerful brew, it will make her sleep more deeply than a human potion could." He frowned. "I was going to use it on Loki to subdue him, but the child needs it more."

Bruce nodded. "All right."

Thor tilted Jaya's head up. "Drink this," he urged gently. "Just a few sips."

She took a few sips, sighed, and was out like a light.

"She's unconscious, and likely to remain so for three hours," JARVIS reported after a second.

"Okay," Bruce said, drawing on all the calm he could possibly find, "let's do this."

The rest of the Avengers were ushered out by Steve, and JARVIS sealed the medical wing to prevent interruptions. Thor and Clint went to check on Loki, and Tony stared at Steve.

"What?" Steve snapped.

"He never said," was all Tony said. "I never thought-"

"What? You never thought that the great Captain America would have any problems?" Steve asked, somewhat bitterly. "That I'd have to go through something like what happened to you in Afghanistan but on a regular basis for years? And that if I stay on this team it'll probably happen for years longer?" He pointed at the glowing circle in Tony's chest. "I had shrapnel there, too. By the time I got back to friendly territory I'd healed around it. They had to cut me open and dig around with pliers to get it out."

"I'm sorry," Tony said sincerely. "I didn't know."

"Yeah." Steve sighed. "There are a lot of things nobody knows."

"Is there anything else we need to put in your file?" Tony asked, his mind already whirring with ideas to make a stronger anaesthetic.

Steve shook his head. "Not anything that's urgent." He raised an eyebrow at Tony. "Anything in yours?"

Tony met his eyes. "Just the ocassional bout of PTSD."

"Of PT what?"

"PTSD- did no one explain it to you? It's like, uh, shell shock, but we understand it more now, it's short for Post-Traumatic- how do you not know this? I'm pretty sure you have it."

Steve gave another sigh. "I've only been awake in this century for three weeks, Stark."

"Three weeks?" Tony echoed. "Oh yeah. We've gotta get you updated. SHIELD didn't give you an assistant for that, or something?"

"No."

"Hm. Well, we can get you and Jaya up to speed at the same time."

"But she's from this century."

"Poverty-stricken India?" Tony asked skeptically. "I found her file, too. She never finished high school, never seen anything but Bollywood. Her only pop culture references in speech are one's Bruce has used, and he's already a bit out of date. Her file didn't say anything about superpowers though, on either parents' side. Not even any scientific work, or even any radiation exposure. Maybe it's a recessive X-gene. Anyways. We'll get to that." He clapped his hands and grinned gleefully. "This is going to be fun. JARVIS, start building an algorithm to find the most important parts of history."

"Yes sir."

Steve sighed again.


	5. Chapter 5

Meanwhile, in the med wing, Bruce and Natasha were operating, guided by JARVIS's sophisticated imaging technology and all their previous skills. Thor's Asgardian sleeping potion seemed to be doing the trick of keeping her under. "All right, it's right there. Forceps?"

Natasha passed him the forceps. "It's at a really awkward angle, try not to get it lodged in the surrounding tissues. We don't want to cause more damage."

"Yeah." Bruce got a hold of the shard and felt a shiver of energy run up the forceps. "Oh boy." He started to pull it out. "Here it comes. Is the container ready?"

"Yes."

"All right." He carefully lifted it out of the incision between Jaya's ribs and let it drop with a clink into the insulated container. Natasha sealed the container, and Bruce let his shoulders slump. "That's it, we're good." He looked at the scans. "I think she'll be able to heal on her own. Let's get her on an IV and get as much nutrients and electrolytes as we can."

Natasha started to put in an IV and a saline bag. "Her levels are already up, look. She's healing."

JARVIS zoomed in on the injury and Bruce nearly put his nose in the screen to watch. "It's not healing, it's reversing," he observed. "JARVIS, do we have any footage of her healing anyone else, or turning something into dust?"

"Yes, Dr. Banner. I've compiled all the footage available featuring her powers." JARVIS put it on screen. There were bits of her in the helicarrier medbay healing Coulson and Barton, bits of her dissolving Chituari soldiers and ships, and one spectacular shot from a street cam that showed her reverting a wall back onto a building.

"JARVIS, can you slow down the dust sequence?"

That sequence slowed down to one-fiftieth the speed, and Bruce and Natasha watched in awe as the Chitauri aged before their eyes, turned into a skeleton, and crumbled to dust. "Did she just speed up time?" Bruce asked.

"I'm not a scientist, but it looks like it. We should show the others."

"Good idea." He put his glasses in his pocket. "JARVIS, can you monitor? Tell me when she wakes up?"

"Yes sir."

They headed up to the common room where the other four were waiting.

"What's the verdict, Doc?" Tony asked. "She gonna make it?"

"She's going to be fine," Bruce confirmed. "We're just waiting for her to wake up now. And, we've figured out what her powers actually are."

"What are they?" Steve asked.

"She can control entropy," Bruce said simply. "I'm running a blood panel to see if it's in her DNA or if it's something else."

"Cool," was all Tony said, and Thor nodded, as if that explained everything. "Soda?" he asked, handing Bruce and Natasha sodas with real cane sugar.

"What do you mean, entropy?" Clint asked. "Isn't that like the expansion of the universe or something?"

"That's the big picture," Tony said. "But entropy is present in smaller systems too, in everthing. It's what happens to a thing during the passage of time."

"Like in humans, their cells go from a perfectly ordered state to decay, body parts break down, systems stop working. Old age is entropy on a small scale," Bruce explained, going into lecture mode from his days at university.

"So she can control it," Steve mused, his tactician's mind shifting into gear, "she can reverse entropy to heal, or to put things back to an earlier state, technically, and she can speed up entropy, turn people and things to dust. Bruce, you said that she didn't have powers before she encountered the Tesseract?"

"She's probably had them dormant all this time," Bruce said, frowning. "I noticed when she accompanied me on doctor visits the patients would get better, but I thought it was the medicine, or the clean water. She could have been low-level manifesting for a while now, just not on that large of a scale."

"So let's say her powers jump-started when she encountered the Tesseract," Natasha said. "She's going to need training and preparation."

"Can you imagine if she got mad?" Clint asked. "One mood swing and she'd level half the city."

"But so far she's only demonstrated the ability to control one object at a time," Steve said.

Thor spoke up. "With training, I believe we could both increase the extent of her powers and help her control them." He sighed. "If there was not Loki and the Tesseract to consider I would stay to help train her."

"You?" Tony asked skeptically. He doubted anyone who favored powerful swings and lightning barrages could help with fine-tuning anything.

Thor spun the hammer lightly in reply and pointed it towards an apple on the counter. The apple began to turn into brown mush and grow mold. Then he spun the hammer in the opposite direction and pointed it at the apple again. The apple began to reverse, becoming fresh, then green, and before their eyes it turned into a flower, a pretty pink apple blossom. He picked it up and handed it to Natasha with a stately bow.

She gave him a brief smile and inspected the flower. "That's impressive."

"Is it the hammer that's doing it?" Tony asked.

"I use it as a focusing cue and a channel," Thor replied in a non-answer sort of way. He glanced up towards the heavens. "I cannot delay any longer. I must take Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard."

"You will come back though, right?"

"Of course. The child requires training, and it would be an honor to defend this realm with you."

"All right," Tony said, "let's do it."

They saw Thor and Loki off in Central Park, a nice open area in case the Tesseract decided to do something explosive, and everyone headed back to Stark Tower. They were to stay there and wait for someone from SHIELD to come and debrief them. Not Coulson, since he was still in critical condition. Probably Hill.

AV-AV-AV

Jaya woke to the sound of an argument. She couldn't open her eyes quite yet, but she could hear Steve and Tony.

"Of course she's going to Harvard."

"Nuh-uh, she's going to Yale."

"Harvard's better."

"Yale."

"You didn't even go to college, how could you possibly know-"

Bruce's voice interrupted them. "What are you guys doing?"

"Planning for her schooling," Tony said.

"She didn't finish high school, you can't be planning college already," Bruce said, rolling his eyes.

"Well, she can get her GED and then go to college. Sadly she's not a techie or I'd send her to MIT, but definitely Ivy League."

Bruce huffed. "No seriously, guys. She's only sixteen. She's not going to college right off the bat."

The other two were silent. Jaya almost went back to sleep in the intervening silence. Then, "Sixteen?" Steve asked, sounding choked. "We let a sixteen year old into combat?"

"I think you better sit down," said a concerned-sounding Bruce. "You too, Tony, you don't look so good."

"I didn't know she was so young," Tony said in a half whisper. "Her age wasn't listed in her file."

"Young, not innocent," Jaya mumbled, finally forcing her tired eyelids open. She blinked up at the three superheroes. "And, Yale. M'father went there." She closed her eyes again.

"Ha," Steve said, pleased, as Tony groaned.

AV-AV-AV

The next time she woke up, Natasha was sitting by her bedside, reading something in a folder. "Hey, sleepyhead," Natasha said, smiling at her. "How do you feel?"

Jaya silently gave herself a quick once over. "Hungry," she finally replied.

"No pain?"

"No."

"Good."

"Where's Bruce?"

"Sleeping." Natasha gestured to a cot in the corner where Bruce was sprawled, his head tipped back and snoring faintly.

Jaya smiled fondly. "Good. He needed rest." She struggled to sit up, and the older woman helped her. "Thank you."

"No problem." Natasha picked up the file again.

Jaya studied her in the low light of the medical ward. "Don't you need sleep?" she asked, after a moment.

Natasha gave her a faint grin, barely a curve of her lips. "Not as much as most people."

"Oh," Jaya replied politely, not knowing what to say to that.

"I'm like Steve," Natasha explained.

"You have a DNA-enhancing serum?" Jaya asked interestedly.

"Yes I do, a different version of it."

Jaya stared at her, wide eyed and amazed. "How old are you?"

"Ninety six," Natasha replied, a definite smile on her lips. "Actually ninety six, not like Steve who was frozen for seventy years."

"But you're so young and beautiful," Jaya said, "is it the serum that keeps you from aging?"

"That, and other gene therapies," Natasha replied.

"What else can you do? Super spying, super strength, super agility, you're really, really good at fighting and tactics and persuasion..." Jaya's eyes were shining with rapidly increasing hero worship. "I think you're my second favorite now."

"Who's your first favorite?" Natasha asked, feeling her heart warm towards this young woman. She'd saved Coulson, she'd saved Clint, the two people she was closest to in the whole world, and she liked Natasha second best. This girl was a keeper.

"Bruce, of course."

"Of course," Natasha said, smiling. "He's a good man."

"Yes he is."

"Who's your third favorite?"

Jaya blushed slightly. "Captain Rogers."

"He's handsome," Natasha agreed, smiling at the girl's innocent blushing.

"No it's not that," Jaya protested, blushing harder. "Well, he is, but, I mean, he was nice to me. Respectful. Most men, they're not." Her face darkened.

"No kidding," Natasha agreed. "Most men are pigs. But these guys are mostly okay."

Jaya raised an eyebrow. "Even Tony Stark?" she asked. From what she'd seen, no one on the team liked Stark.

"Even Tony Stark," Natasha said, nodding. "I went undercover as his assistant for a while, and he's a good person. You just have to dig under the two miles of sarcasm and charm to find his heart. You know it's true."

Jaya wrinkled her nose. "I know. But the way he speaks, I don't understand half the things he says. I think it's just the culture difference."

Natasha patted her hand. "You'll get used to him, especially if you hang out with him and Clint."

Jaya nodded, and then her eyes lit up with mischief. "What about you and Clint?"

"Didn't you say you were hungry?" Natasha asked, blatantly changing the subject and purposely doing a dramatic turn away to make Jaya laugh.

Bruce woke up at the sound of Jaya laughing, and rolled off the cot. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and smiled at them. "Feeling better?" he asked, coming over to check Jaya's pulse and temperature.

"Yes."

"Good. Can you lift your shirt, I want to check your injury."

Jaya lifted her shirt just enough so he could see it. "It's gone," she said, surprised.

"Yes it is. We figured out what kind of superpower you have." Bruce helped her out of bed. "Let's go have lunch and we'll explain it, tikhe?"

They had Chinese takeout, and explained what entropy was to Jaya. "So what now?" she asked.

"Now, you get some training, go to school, and we'll see what happens. Hopefully with no more alien invasions."

Jaya nodded. "Okay."

Clint came in. "We might have a teeny problem."

"What?" Bruce asked warily.

"Our mini-super needs a guardian." Clint put down a file. "They can't give her any papers unless she's got a legitimate guardian. Someone's gonna have to adopt her."

They all looked at Bruce. He shook his head. "I can't. Half the government still wants to arrest me. Not to mention the other guy."

Jaya frowned, but nodded. "I understand." She looked at Natasha hopefully.

Natasha shook her head. "It's going to have to be Tony or Steve. They're the only two that would have a semblance of a normal, stable existence. Clint and I don't officially exist half the time, and Thor, well..."

So Jaya went in search of Steve and Tony.

Steve, when asked, gave her a deer in the headlights look and said, "I'm only twenty-six. I don't think I could be a good guardian when two years ago I couldn't even take care of myself, and three weeks ago I was still a Capsicle, as Stark says." He held out a hand. "Unofficially, though, I will help you, whatever you need. Just, not tech stuff, or price stuff, or modern history stuff..."

Jaya smiled a bit at that. "Thank you."

Steve nodded and watched her go in search of Tony. He knew there was no way Stark was going to say yes. Howard Stark abhorred the idea of children, apparently ignored his own child, and Tony had no plans to follow in his father's footsteps. He would not take legal guardianship of a teenager.

AV-AV-AV

"Sure," Tony said, eyeing Jaya critically. "I'll sign for you."

Jaya was honestly surprised. "Really?"

"Yeah, of course. Nobody else can support a kid, and since you and Bruce are living with me already, why not?"

"Oh," Jaya said lamely. "Thank you."

"No problem." He gave her a serious look. "Just one thing, if I'm going to be your legal guardian and all."

"Yes?" Jaya asked nervously, wondering if he was going to make some really sarcastic cultural reference that she'd have to ask someone about.

It was not a reference. "I'll pay your bills and your tuition and sign your forms, but I'm not doing the dad thing. If you actually want advice or comfort, don't come to me with your emotional problems. I am not good with feelings. Cultural stuff, fine. Superhero stuff, also great. Tech stuff, brilliant. No feels, no teenage angst, okay?"

She blinked at him. "What is angst?"

"Like, teenage mood swings or something, existential stuff, I don't know." He looked at her impatiently. "Deal?"

She gave him a slight nod. "Deal."

"Cool. If you do need to talk to someone though, you can talk to Pepper, or JARVIS. They're great with that stuff. I'm assuming Natashalie can also handle that. However, I'm fine with complaining about cramps and periods and stuff. That's just biology."

Jaya blushed. She'd never complained aloud about any of that since she was twelve. It just wasn't talked about, especially not in the presence of men.

He waved her away, ignoring the dark blush on her cheeks. "I'll sign the stuff when the Hawk brings 'em down. Go on, I've got repairs to do. A whole lot of repairs. My suit and half my freakin' tower." He ushered her out of the lab, still talking partly to himself and partly to JARVIS.

Jaya walked back to the elevator, and then came back. "Um, Tony?"

"What, short stuff?"

"I can repair your suit, if you want."

He grinned at her and shook his head. "No thanks, kiddo. I like doing the work, and I've got to make improvements anyway. Next suit though, or in battle, I'll totally take you up on the offer."

She nodded, and went back upstairs. "He said yes," she announced to Bruce, the two super spies, and Steve.

Steve choked on his coffee. "He said yes?"

Natasha gave Jaya a look that read 'What did I tell you?' She turned to Clint with a smug grin and held out a hand. "I win."

Clint passed over a twenty with a scowl. His scowl disappeared when he turned to Jaya. "Congrats, kid, in about twenty minutes you're going to be an American citizen." He picked up the papers. "Lemme go give these to Stark."

It was actually more like forty minutes, since Stark insisted on reading and double checking everything before he signed because "you can never trust SHIELD farther than you can throw them, and I'm not superhuman, so sit down, Clint, we're gonna be awhile."

When the papers were signed, the two super spies went back to SHIELD for debriefing and other SHIELD things, Steve headed back to his apartment in Brooklyn, Bruce went to his room to meditate, Tony met Pepper at the airport, and Jaya... sat on the floor in front of a window and stared out at the city. She was cold, but she didn't have a sweater and there were no blankets in sight. She fell asleep soon afterwards, still cold.

 **A/N: See you next Monday!**


	6. Chapter 6

She woke up warm in her guest room, a plate of sandwiches on her bedside table. She blinked lethargically at the ceiling.

"Miss Marcus, your metabolism requires constant nutrition," JARVIS said kindly. "Please eat the sandwiches."

Jaya sat up and started on the stack of sandwiches. "Being a superhero is very different," she commented. "I don't know how I'm going to afford my food for the rest of my life."

"As a ward of Mr. Stark your monetary needs are taken care of," JARVIS replied.

Jaya frowned. "I forgot about that. Hmm."

"When you are finished eating, Mr. Stark has offered to take you shopping."

She blushed again. "Excuse me?"

"Or rather, he has agreed to let you and Agent Romanoff go shopping."

"Oh."

She finished her sandwiches, showered, got dressed in another outfit that had magically appeared in her closet, and ventured out into the world. Or rather, the common room. The venturing into the world didn't happen until Agent Romanoff appeared, and ushered her towards the car garage.

In India, Jaya had been accustomed to large outdoor markets, crowded with people and booths and stalls and vendors and cows and chickens and donkeys and cars and hordes of children... The small mall that Natasha took her to made her stop and stare. It was clean, barely populated after the battle of -was it only yesterday? - and the sleek lines and elegant displays made Jaya feel completely uncivilized. "I don't even know where to start," she said numbly.

Natasha laughed softly. "That's all right. When I first came to America, too, I walked into the mall and walked straight out again." She tugged Jaya towards a store called Macy's. "But let's start here. And Stark said to tell you that if you spend less than a hundred dollars you're grounded."

Jaya's jaw dropped as she stared at the prices of jeans. "Don't you mean that the other way around?" she asked weakly.

"Nope," Natasha said blithely. "Now we need two sets of wardrobe, one for warm weather, one for cold, some for staying in, and some for going out, and you'll need underwear, pajamas, gym clothes, and outerwear." She pointed to the Juniors section. "All right. Let's go."

Jaya was dragged through half the mall, they stopped for lunch, and they went back to Stark Tower with at least two dozen bags. She put everything away, and fell onto her bed face-down. She was asleep a second later.

When she woke up, it was dark, and someone was draping a blanket over her. She mumbled something inarticulate. She heard a chuckle and felt a hand smoothing her hair. "Night, kiddo." It was Tony.

She fell asleep again a moment later.

AV-AV-AV

When Jaya woke up the next morning she felt better than she'd ever felt in her life. "Good morning, JARVIS," she said cheerfully, rolling out of bed and heading for the bathroom.

"Good morning, Miss Marcus."

She showered and changed into some new clothes, and made her way to the kitchen. Clint was there, looking half-asleep and drinking coffee straight from the pot. Steve was sitting across from him, looking slightly more awake but staring into his coffee cup. "Morning, Jaya," he said, and resumed staring at his coffee.

"Namaste," she said, bowing her head. "Where's everyone else?"

JARVIS spoke up. "Sir is in the lab. Dr. Banner is on his way to the kitchen, and Agent Romanoff is-"

"Right behind you," Natasha said, from behind Clint's ear.

Clint let out a girlish shriek and almost spilled his coffee, but he flipped it upright at the last second. "Not cool, Tash," he muttered, and went back to his zombie state.

Jaya pulled out ingredients and frowned. "Who wants pancakes?" she asked.

"Meeee," Clint sighed, draining his coffee. He added a "Please," at the last second.

Jaya made piles of pancakes, enough to satisfy herself, Clint, Natasha, Bruce, and Steve. Then she took some down to Tony.

"You don't have to feed me, kid, it's fine," Tony said, taken aback by the pancakes, fresh coffee, and syrup.

"I know," she said cheerfully. "But I want to."

"Oh. Cool." He started in on the pancakes. "So," he said, watching Jaya as she introduced herself to the robots, "high school."

She turned back to him. "Huh?" She patted Dumm-e's head absently.

He gestured vaguely with his fork. "You know. You have to finish school. So do you want to do like, public school, or get your GED, or home school?"

"I don't know," she said, eyes wide. "Which one's better?"

Tony laughed. "You're asking me? I was in private boarding school since I was ten- oh hey, boarding school, we could do that too."

"No," she said flatly.

"All right. We'll start with homeschool programs. Public school is too, ugh." He opened another holographic screen. "JARVIS?"

They chose an online charter school that let you advance at your own pace, and Tony got Jaya enrolled by lunchtime. "You start in September," he said. "Congratulations, you're a junior."

"A junior what?"

"An eleventh-grader."

"Oh. How many grades are there in this country?"

He sighed. "JARVIS, where are we on that list to get Cap and Jaya up on pop culture?"

"The list has been mostly compiled, sir. You may start in the late forties if you wish, sir."

"Awesome. J, I love you." He grinned at Jaya. "No time like the present."

Tony made Steve sit on the couch, and when the first scene of Rear Window began to play and Steve saw the Alfred Hitchcock outline, the billionaire saw the supersoldier's body relax. Steve went almost limp into the cushions, and he started to grin, a big, cheesy grin that made him look years younger.

After that they watched Treasure of the Sierra Madre. From there they went on a Humphrey Bogart marathon.

Bruce found them throwing popcorn at the screen during a horrible special-effects scene. It was 4:07 in the morning, and there were remnants of snacks everywhere. "Seriously guys?" he asked.

"Hey Bruce," Tony said cheerfully. "Film noir?"

Bruce sat down in the armchair.

AV-AV-AV

By the end of that week, Jaya's English had improved, and both she and Steve were making movie references with the best of them. They'd also embarked on a tourist's trip across the East Coast, and Clint found himself the not-unwilling babysitter as they wandered in and out of museums, tourist traps, monuments, and parks. They were planning a trip to Disney World, and that sparked a Disney movie marathon that had even Natasha singing 'Be Our Guest' under her breath as she cleaned her knives.

Clint made her stop because it was creeping everybody out.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Hi guys! Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, I really appreciate it. I have this chapter and one more pre-written and from there updates might come slower because I've got more work and I've rediscovered my love of painting so I've been working on some acrylics.**

After a month and a half of doing pretty much nothing but cultural assimilation, Steve decided to spread his wings. He borrowed a motorcycle from Tony's collection, and headed out to the United States with a duffel bag and a packet of cash. He was completely off the radar, to SHIELD's everlasting annoyance. Clint and Coulson had a bet going as to who would explode first- Fury or the agents assigned to "keeping" Cap.

With one innocent having gained independence, the rest of the Avengers turned to the baby of the group. Jaya was suddenly in the position of being mothered constantly, either by assassins, engineers, or scientists, and it was, to use an American phrase, freaking her out.

"I've taken care of myself for years, I do not need someone to ask if I've eaten lunch or done my laundry," Jaya griped to JARVIS. She was systematically "dusting" the TV remote and "rewinding" it back to perfect health, taking her frustrations out on it, instead of, say, Clint. "I took care of Bruce, remember?"

JARVIS, if he'd had a throat, would have cleared his throat. "Perhaps," he suggested delicately, "the Avengers are simply excited to have someone your age to care for, and once the novelty fades, they will realize you are in fact independent."

Jaya frowned. She hadn't considered that. "None of them have children?" she asked.

"No. Agents Barton and Romanoff are career operatives. Sir has never had that goal, and Doctor Banner's plans were, interrupted."

"Tactful," Natasha's voice said, startling her. "That option was taken from me when I was younger than you," she continued.

"I'm sorry," Jaya said guiltily.

"It was a long time ago," Natasha dismissed with a wave of her hand. "But. You deserve as normal and safe a childhood as we can give you. Clint and I, we know what having to grow up too quickly does to a person. So do Tony, Bruce, and Steve."

Jaya nodded slowly. "I guess, I can understand that."

Natasha flashed her a quick smile. "We're an odd little group, aren't we?"

"I think you're all amazing," Jaya said honestly.

"Don't forget yourself," Natasha retorted, smirking. "The baby Avenger. Have you eaten lunch yet?"

Jaya groaned and laughed. "Not yet."

AV-AV-AV

Tony was an engineer who understood physics very, very well. Probably too well. This made him the perfect candidate to teach Jaya about entropy and what it meant to control it. He thought he'd have a problem with a sixteen-year-old hanging around his workshop all day, but surprisingly, he didn't mind at all, most of the time.

"It's nice having a bright young mind to teach," he told Bruce.

Bruce glanced over at Jaya fondly. She'd worn herself out trying to make different particles decay into their half-lives, and she was asleep on the lab sofa, a small round lump under a Captain America blanket. "You'd make a good father," Bruce said. "You're really good with her."

Tony gave a shudder. "Perish the thought. No, you are good with her. I am good at pointing her in the direction of stuff to entropi-fy."

"Entropi-fy?" Bruce echoed, smirking.

"Yes. It's a very technical word."

AV-AV-AV

While the Science Bros gave her basic training for her powers, the super spies started training her in hand to hand and other spy skills.

"The most useful talents are ones that don't require any fighting," Natasha said, with a mysterious air.

"Like pickpocketing," Clint added, holding up the candy that had been in Jaya's pocket a second ago.

"I was talking about persuasion and manipulation," Natasha said, rolling her eyes.

"Oh. Those too."

Jaya raised an eyebrow. "Like on Leverage?"

"Ah, Sophie Deveareux," Natasha sighed dramatically. "Woman after my own heart."

"I like Elliot," Clint said.

"Of course you do."

"Except he gets hit too much. I like to be more, hands-off."

"We know, Clint."

"Just saying."

"Ignore the birdbrain," Natasha instructed.

AV-AV-AV

When Steve came back three months later, tanned and looking way more relaxed, he found Jaya in the living room, carefully "dusting" the edges of a brand-new piece of furniture to make it look distressed and vintage. "Isn't that cheating?" he asked.

"Steve!" Jaya left the coffee table and got up to give him a hug. "Welcome home!"

Steve felt a warm glow at the word 'home'. "It's good to be back," he said, returning the hug. "I missed you guys. What have you been up to?"

"Restoring and/or vintaging stuff," Jaya said proudly. "I have my own Etsy page, and I started high school. That's going okay."

"Good for you. Where's everyone else?"

"Tony is in Malibu on business. Bruce is consulting on something in R&D, and Clint and Tasha are on their way back from doing stuff in Mali. Did you have fun?"

"Yeah, I took lots of pictures. JARVIS?"

"Uploading camera roll," the AI announced. Giving Steve a Starkphone had been his idea, and it seemed the good captain was now fully at ease with the tech of the times.

The two looked through the photos and Jaya was spellbound by their quality. "Steve, these are really good. You should showcase these."

Steve blushed. "Thanks." He looked at her for a moment, assessing, and then pulled a sketchbook from his backpack. "I drew, some stuff, if you wanna see-" he handed it to her.

Jaya slowly, reverently, flipped the pages of the sketchbook. Sketches of all the Avengers, even Phil, in various groupings and poses, made her smile. They were so life-like. The caricature of a glaring Fury with steam coming out of his ears made her laugh. There were other sketches as well, of the people or places that he had visited. And there were sketches of other people too, that Jaya recognized from Tony's labs, people from Steve's past. "They're all beautiful," she said quality. "I mean it, Steve, your art is incredible."

He smiled softly. "Thanks."

Jaya was inspired by a sudden thought. "You should talk to Pepper," she suggested. "She could help you figure out a way to display it, if you want."

"Maybe," Steve started, and the elevator doors opening made him pause. "Hey guys."

"Welcome back," Clint replied, giving him a grin and a slap on the back. "Did you bring me a present?"

"Infant," Natasha muttered fondly, smacking Clint on the arm. She leaned up and kissed Steve on the cheek. "Welcome back. You look well."

"Thanks."

Natasha looked at Jaya expectantly.

She held up a pair of keys.

Steve frowned, surprised. "Are those my keys? How did you-"

Natasha beamed at her young student and gave her a high-five. "Nice work. Phil now owes me twenty bucks. He's gonna be so disappointed."

Steve's jaw dropped. "Are you- you taught her to pickpocket!?"

"It's a spy thing," Natasha said. "Never to be used for evil."

"Nope," Jaya said cheerfully.

Steve raised an eyebrow. "What else did they teach you?"

All three of them grinned.

Steve took an uneasy step backwards. "Maybe I'll just go back to the Pacific Northwest."

Jaya gave him puppy eyes. "But I need you to teach me how to best use my powers..."

Steve wasn't taken in for a second, but he caved anyway.

Seeing Steve's strategic mind in action was awe-inspiring, and when Tony came back from Malibu a few days later, the Avengers began training together, using different combinations of skills, team members, and tools to get impressive results.

Coulson may have cried happy tears watching his favorite people all working together like a well-oiled machine, but the only one present was JARVIS, and he respected Agent Coulson too much to say anything.

And then the Fire Nation attacked. No, Jaya had been watching too much anime. And then, the laser-shooting robots attacked.

The Avengers were called in to deal with it. Steve took the lead. "Everyone suit up. Hawk, Widow, prep the jet. Iron Man, take point and scope it out. Banner, gonna need a Code Green, buddy, sorry."

Bruce shrugged. They'd been practicing with the Hulk and he was getting used to it. Plus Hulk actually listened to Cap, so that was nice.

"And me?" Jaya asked.

Steve shook his head. "Not this time."

"I can help!"

"But you are sixteen, Jaya. None of us could live with it if anything happened to you. Stay here, and off active comms."

And they were gone.

Jaya could only pace fretfully and keep her eyes glued to the live news footage. JARVIS wouldn't even let her on comms just to listen, saying something vague about little pitchers. Jaya didn't understand that one.

So she paced, and redid the death and life of the living room furniture about fifty times as she paced, and-

"Miss Marcus, your energy levels are dropping. Please cease using your powers and eat something."

"What about them?" Jaya asked, gesturing to the TV, where the weary Avengers were mopping up the last of the bots.

"Coulson is already on site with food and water," JARVIS reassured her.

Jaya grudgingly reheated some of last night's curry and ate, keeping an eye on the TV, which was showing the aftermath of the battle. "All that damage," she sighed. She could fix so much of that if she was there...

JARVIS spoke up. "Captain Rogers is calling."

"Jaya?" Steve asked. "You still up for a job?"

"Yes!"

"Great. Coulson's gonna pick you up and bring you here. We need your repair skills. ETA ten minutes."

"Okay. I mean, copy."

He chuckled.

"Is everyone okay?"

"Yes, we're all fine. Hulk is de-Hulked and napping. No serious injuries."

"Good."

Ten minutes later Jaya was on her way with Coulson, who was helping her into various pieces of bullet proof tac gear. "We need to make you a suit," he decided. He handed her an earpiece. "Also your call sign is Entropy on comms. No names."

"Right." Now that it was happening, Jaya was nervous. The first battle had been aliens, spur of the moment global life and death but now.. she swallowed hard.

Coulson patted her on the arm. "Just breathe and follow Cap's directions," he advised kindly. "You'll be fine."

Cap met them on the perimeter and escorted Jaya in. "Focus on buildings and electricals, just like we've been practicing. Support beams and key utilities first."

"Kay." Jaya let her newfound instincts take over and she went to work, repairing buildings, ripped-up streets, and as many utilities as she could find. By raising rubble and debris they found several civilians were trapped, and Jaya felt a surge of satisfaction at being able to help.

Sometime later, a gentle touched stirred her focus. It was Bruce, awake from his post-transformation nap. "Okay, Entropy, time to go."

"I'm not done," she protested half-heartedly.

"No, but you're exhausted." Bruce put an arm around her shoulders. "You've given repair crews a huge headstart and made the buildings structurally sound. That's all you need to do. Come on." And he walked her back to the jet, where everyone else was converging.

"Good work everyone," Steve praised, as they headed back.

"Not too shabby for the second Avengers debut," Clint agreed.

Tony frowned. "Yeah, except we destroyed all the bots and we don't know where they came from." He kicked a pile of inert robot bits on the floor. "This is all that's left of one."

Jaya leaned forward to look at it. "I can fix it," she volunteered.

Tony eyed her and shook his head. "You're listing a little to starboard, there, kiddo. You get some rest and then you can pick it up later, okay?"

"Okay." She leaned into Bruce's shoulder and dozed off, the voices of the others fading into the background.

"She's really worn out," Clint observed quietly. "Is she okay?"

"She's fine," Bruce said.

"Doing this was a huge drain on her powers," Steve told them. "In our practices, this is how tired we calculated she'd be, so she's going to be fine. She just needs a plate load of sandwiches."

"Not 'merican," Jaya protested tiredly, waving a hand in Steve's general direction. "I'want rice. Nd'naan."

A soft chuckle, and a ruffle of her hair. "We'll get take-out," Tony promised.

"Mm."

She revived a little while later when Bruce waved the food under her nose. "Pumpkin curry," he said, handing her the box and a fork.

"I love you," Jaya mumbled, as she inhaled the take-out.

Bruce just grinned.


	8. Chapter 8

"This is the cheesiest movie I've ever seen in my life," Natasha declared, throwing a chip at the screen. "This is cheesier than the actual Pride and Prejudice movie."

"That's why it's the best," Jaya said, squishing the pillow in her arms.

Natasha smiled at her. "Yeah." She stood up and stretched, impossibly graceful in her motion. "All right, I have to go. Don't watch the next episode of Downton without me."

"Be back before Sunday and I won't," Jaya half-threatened, laughing.

Natasha ruffled her hair. "I'll have JARVIS lock you out."

"JARVIS loves me better," Jaya retorted, grinning.

"True."

"Be safe!" Jaya called as the spy went off to save the world.

Natasha just waved in response.

Jaya turned back to the TV and sighed. "Just you and me, JARVIS," she said. Tony was in Tokyo with Pepper, Clint was off the grid, Steve was taking a local college course, and Bruce was actually meeting with Director Fury about "Hulk stuff".

"Shall I put on another episode of Doctor Who while you work on your historical essay?" JARVIS asked.

Jaya sighed mournfully. "I don't get the point of essays."

"This current one is one hundred fifty points to your total grade," JARVIS replied.

She squinted up at the nearest ceiling camera. "When's it due?"

"Friday," he replied.

"I got time," Jaya decided, leaning back into the couch.

"To write a five page paper?" JARVIS asked, his voice as dry as the Sahara.

Jaya heaved a sigh from the depths of her toes. "Fiiiine, I will work on the essay." She picked up her notebook.

JARVIS put on the next episode of Doctor Who.

"Now I'm getting parented by the computer," Jaya muttered under her breath. Aloud she said, "Not that I don't appreciate it. I do. You're a good dad-type, JARVIS."

"Thank you, Miss Marcus."

She pouted up at the camera. "Can't you call me Jaya, JARV, please?"

"It is not part of my protocols," JARVIS replied.

"Fine. We'll work on it."

JARVIS had other things to do besides look over Jaya's shoulder, so he "left". Besides all the people in SI downstairs, Jaya was essentially alone in the tower. She pulled her tablet out and checked her Etsy page, ostensibly for "research". She blinked-

And there was a man standing in the middle of the living room. "Jaya."

She gaped at him. Hazel eyes, blond hair, and a crooked smile that Jaya hadn't seen in four years. "...Dad?" she whispered, her voice quavering. "Baba?"

"Jaya."

She swiped at her eyes, tears falling spontaneously. She dropped her tablet on the sofa and stood, trying to get her voice to work. "What, why, I thought you were dead?" She hugged him tightly, squishing her face into his shoulder. She started sobbing in earnest when he returned her hug and started to stroke her hair. "Where were you?" she sobbed, going back to Hindi. "Where's mama? Why did you leave me?"

He paused and pulled her away from him, eyes going dark. "Jaya, beti, your mother is dead."

She stared at him through blurry eyes and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "But, where were you?"

He took another step back and scrubbed his hands over his face. "Jaya, listen to me, I saw you on the news. Using your, powers." He shuddered. "I hoped to all the gods that you would have been spared, but-" He locked his gaze with hers. "We're dangerous, Jaya, don't you see?"

She took a step back, suddenly wary of the tortured look in his eyes. "What happened to my amma?" she asked. "Tell me."

"I killed her," he rasped, and dropped his gaze to the soft carpet.

Jaya's blood ran cold. "What?"

"I couldn't control my powers," he said, starting to pace. "I, it was an accident, but she was dead. You were at school, I thought it was safe to-" He stopped and looked at his hands. "But you can't kill yourself by controlling the entropy in your own body."

All her words stuck in her throat as she stared at him. "What, what are you doing here?" she asked.

He met her gaze, his eyes glowing with superhuman mania. "Don't you see? We're dangerous, child."

"So what, you want us to kill each other?" she asked, horrified.

"Yes, exactly." He beamed at her. "And if that doesn't work, we can use our powers and live far away from everyone, from anyone who might get hurt."

She shook her head. "No, no, I'm safe here, I'm fine, I'm not dangerous, I-"

"What do you think the government will want you to do, once you're old enough to be an Avenger?" her father asked. "You think you won't use your powers to do horrible things?"

"I wouldn't!"

"And if you got angry?" he pressed, taking a step forward. "If you lost your temper, or you lost your control? You could bring down this whole tower, Jaya, in seconds."

She backed away from him. "JARVIS, call Security, now!" she called, jumping over the back of the couch to have something between them. She wiped another tear away almost angrily. "JARVIS?" she asked uncertainly, when nothing happened.

Her father watched her, pity in his eyes. "You don't understand, do you? I have this Tower in an anentropic state. Everyone except for you and me are frozen in time, moving neither forward nor back."

Her gaze dropped to his hand. It was trembling. She snapped her eyes up to his face. "You're sweating," she said.

"It's a big tower," he said, and held out his hand. "Come with me, Jaya. We need to go, now."

She shook her head. "I'm not going with you. Get away from me."

"i'm your father. You're coming with me."

"You were dead!" she shouted at him. "I won't go with you! You killed amma! Go away!"

He stalked towards her.

Jaya threw her hands up in front of her, using her powers to freeze his feet. "Stop!"

He frowned at her. "Jaya, you're not being reasonable." His foot twitched forward as he fought her powers with his.

"Go away," she said, and managed to rewind him back across the living room. "Go away!"

He tilted his head. "You'll see, beti. When you get too dangerous, you'll see I was right. Come find me when you're ready."

Jaya didn't even blink-and he was gone. "JARVIS!" she called, collapsing to her knees as her whole body started to tremble.

"Miss Marcus? My internal clock seems to have lagged four point nine minutes according to the official time..." JARVIS voice changed to one of deep concern. "Miss Marcus? Your vitals are dropping into levels of shock, and I'm reading high concentrations of decaying neutrinos, and what I believe are chronitons... what happened? Did you overexert your powers?"

Jaya couldn't answer. Her chest tightened and her hearing started to fade out as her limbs tingled. She couldn't breathe, couldn't see... the world faded out.

AV-AV-AV

Jaya woke up screaming. "JARVIS! Stop him!" She bolted upright and almost fell out of- her bed? What?

Bruce was sitting on a chair beside her bed. He dropped his book when she screamed and he put a hand over his heart, trying to calm himself. "Jaya?" he asked worriedly.

"Bruce!" Jaya scrambled out of the covers and threw herself at the scientist, clinging to his shirt as she wept. "Bruce, Bruce, he was here, mere baba, he did it, he was the one, he wanted to-" She broke off, sobbing too hard to speak.

He rubbed her back gently, waiting for her to cry herself out. Once she was calmer, he handed her a tissue and asked, "What happened? Who did what?"

Slowly, painfully, Jaya explained everything that had hapenned.

"He kept the entire tower out of time for five minutes?!" he asked.

Jaya nodded shakily.

"Well why didn't he just grab you and run?" Bruce asked, and then blushed guiltily.

Jaya contemplated it. The look in his eyes. "I think he was afraid of me," she said. "If he is afraid of himself, also," she sighed. "I don't know."

"Okay." Bruce wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. "Try and get some more rest while I let the others know what happened, all right?"

She grabbed at his sleeve. "What if he comes back?"

"We're here now," Bruce promised, "you're safe."

Jaya huddled under the blanket. Any moment, her father could come in and no one would know because time was stopped. "JARVIS?" she asked.

"Yes, Miss Marcus?"

"Can you talk to me?" she asked, "Just to make sure we're still going forward?"

"Of course, Miss Marcus."

Soothed by JARVIS' chater, Jaya almost managed to go back to sleep before the door opened to admit Steve, Tony, Natasha, and Bruce. Natasha immediately came over to the bed and sat on it next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "You okay?" Natasha asked, honest concern in her eyes.

Jaya curled into Natasha's side. "I'm okay. I'm just- what if he comes back?"

"He won't," Tony said firmly sitting at the foot of the bed and turning on his tablet. "Bruce and I started work on an anti-chroniton generator to keep the top ten levels of the Tower in sync with the time-stream. We're going to move your training a floor down so you can work on your powers, but otherwise, there's no way he's coming after you. I've got JARVIS hacking all the satellites to trace him, and we've got SHIELD looking for him, too." He patted her ankle. "You're going to be okay, kiddo. We're not gonna let him do anything to you." He gave her a tiny smile. "You're a Stark adoptee, now, there's no way Pepper's gonna let anything happen to you."

"He killed my mom," Jaya said, still stuck on that point.

Tony patted her ankle again, clear sympathy in his eyes. "I know. I'm sorry."

"Ice cream," Steve decided. "I think we need some ice cream."

Tony stood up and clapped Steve on the shoulder. "Excellent tactical decision."

Jaya smiled briefly. They weren't going to cast her aside. Tony might cast Steve out a window for insisting that vanilla with fudge sauce was better than marionberry pie, but everything was going to be okay.

AV-AV-AV

"I'm not afraid to get out of the Tower," Jaya insisted, curling her feet up onto the sofa. "I'm not."

"Then why are you turning down lunch at the best pizza place in the city?" Clint challenged.

"...they deliver?" Jaya tried.

Clint sat on the edge of the coffee table and leaned forward. "Jaya, sweetheart, it's been three weeks. You can't let fear of your father control your life."

"But what if he hurts people?"

A new voice intruded. "He won't be hurting anybody anymore." Director Fury entered the room, his long black coat swirling behind him.

Jaya and Clint stood. "Sir," Clint said.

"Director?" Jaya asked.

Fury handed her a file. "SHIELD agents apprehended your father heading for Canada. They managed to capture him. He's no longer a threat to you."

Jaya took the file with trembling fingers. "What's going to happen to him?"

"He will serve time for killing his wife," Fury said simply.

Clint wrapped an arm around Jaya's shoulders. "So we can go out for pizza, sir?"

Fury gave Jaya a small smile. "You can go out for pizza, Barton."

"Thank you, director," Jaya said, beaming at him.

He patted her arm. "You saved two of my best agents, Miss Marcus. Thank you." And he swept away.

"He's so cool," Jaya said.

Clint laughed. "Very cool. Go put your shoes on, midget, I'm starving."

AV-AV-AV


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: And here we come to Iron Man 3! From here, we're going off the rails, y'all. I'm going to take the MCU as a suggestion, like Qui-Gon Jinn takes the Council's orders as "suggestions" lol.**

"Jaya! Wanna go to California with me?"

Jaya lifted her head and dragged open her eyes. "Whuh?" She glanced at the clock. 4:34 in the morning. She turned to glare at Tony. "Wha?"

"California," he said, bouncing on his toes, apparently unaware of the fact that all sane people should be asleep. "No snow, no cold, no ugly. Just white beaches, warm weather, movie stars, shopping... coming?"

Jaya rolled over and put the pillow over her head. "Too 'rly, go'way."

He lifted the pillow from her grasp. "Come on, Jaya, you homeschool, you can do what you want, live a little! All you've seen from America is New York and New Jersey, and that's a horrible sample size."

"Why me?" she groaned, pulling the blanket over her eyes.

"Because Pepper's gonna be working and I want to hang out with someone," Tony replied. "Plus don't tell me you're not dying of cold."

"Take Steve, he's your new bromance," Jaya said. She sat up and pulled her hair into a ponytail, resigned to being awake.

Tony pouted. "I can't, he's off with Natasha doing advanced SHIELD training. Please, Jaya?"

She looked at him. Hyper, exhausted, and dead serious. "Can I meet my favorite actress?" she asked.

"Yes," he said promptly.

"It's a deal."

"Great! Jet leaves in an hour, start packing. JARVIS, lights!" He left like Tigger on speed.

Jaya flopped back down on the bed. "JARVIS, if I sleep five more minutes can I still pack in time?"

"No."

"If I get up now, will you start the coffeemaker?"

"I already did."

Jaya smiled at the ceiling. "J, you're the best."

"So they tell me," JARVIS replied dryly.

Jaya packed her clothes, drank her coffee, and met Tony in the lobby.

"All right, Miss Starklet, are you ready to go?"

She blinked at him. "Miss what?"

"Like a starlet, but a Stark? Cuz technically you're my ward?"

Jaya shook her head. "Uh-uh."

"Okay. We'll work on it." He ushered her out the door. "Happy! Let's go!"

AV-AV-AV

Jaya had never really thought about it, but Tony Stark was really, really rich. His private jet was ridiculous. His house in Malibu- "This cannot possibly be safe," Jaya said doubtfully, peering out the window down the cliff. "What if it breaks?"

Tony scoffed. "It's not going to break."

"What if you blow something up in your lab?"

"I've done that before and nothing happened." He waved a hand. "It's fine. I built it, remember?" He steered her away from the wall of windows overlooking the ocean. "Come pick your guest room, there's three to choose from. Well, five, but three with the best views."

She picked her room.

They went out to brunch. Jaya saw no less than seven famous people while they were there. Three of them came over to say hello to Tony. He was suave, charming, and expertly deflected all attention from Jaya when they recognized her. Jaya forgot, sometimes, that she was famous from the battle of Manhattan, too.

AV-AV-AV

Being warm was heavenly. When she wasn't doing schoolwork, Jaya spent all her time on the beach, soaking up the sun (under SPF 55, thanks Pepper). She fell in love with making fruit smoothies and practically lived on them when Pepper didn't insist on both Tony and Jaya eating regular meals. It wasn't all sunshine and fireworks though.

"Hey Tony?"

"Yeah squirt?"

She did a lazy spin in the swivel chair, staring up at the blue holograms. "I know you said no angst, but, do you ever get nightmares?" she asked, trying to force a casual tone into her voice.

He froze. "Maybe. Why?" He put down the hologram he was holding and knelt in front of her. "Are you having nightmares?"

She avoided his gaze. "You said no angst," she reminded him, looking rather regretful that she'd opened her mouth.

He touched her knee. "Hey, that was ages ago. I'm a sensitive team player, now. What's going on, kiddo?"

Jaya pulled her knees up to her chin, curling into a tiny ball. "I keep dreaming that, you guys are gonna go out there, and, something happens, and I'm not there, and," she hid her face, "I don't wanna talk about it."

"And one of us dies?" Tony finished gently.

"Yeah," came the mumbled reply.

He patted the top of her foot. Tony wished with every inch of his being that she had spoken to someone else. Natasha or Bruce, maybe. Steve, even, the great leader that he was. That's what you get for dragging her to California to escape your own nightmares, his subconscious snarked. Take your own advice. He cleared his throat. "Anything else?"

She stifled a little sniffle into her hands. "My dad," she whispered. "Sometimes, what if, what if I turn into him?"

Tony hugged her. "You won't," he said firmly, resting his chin on her head. He tried to ignore the burning in his eyes. "If you're asking yourself that question, you won't." He leaned back and caught her gaze. "Understand?"

She nodded and tucked her head back under his chin, hugging him tightly. "What about you?" she asked.

His arc reactor skipped a pulse. "Oh, you know," he said, voice strangled. "The usual. Falling. Failing. Space is... space is a lot bigger and scarier than Star Trek makes it look, you know."

She felt the trembling in his arms and squeezed tight. "You should talk to someone," she said into his shoulder. "Steve does."

"He does?" Tony couldn't imagine Cap going to therapy. But Steve Rogers, puppy-eyed, sad, unusually-sassy Steve...maybe?

"Yeah. Coulson found him someone. He says it helps." Jaya stepped back and wiped at her eyes.

"Hm. I'll, uh, have to look into that," Tony said, trying for a nonchalant tone. "You, uh, feel better?"

"Yeah." She leaned up on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "Thank you."

"Just the everyday perils of being a superhero," Tony said dryly. "Let's wholeheartedly repress everything wrong with us and build a robot. How's that?"

Jaya gave a choked giggle. "Sure."

"Cool. Go get a snack and get back here."

Jaya nodded and went up the stairs.

Tony took a deep, shuddering breath. "Ookay. JARVIS, ah, get Coulson to, you know."

"Of course, sir." JARVIS sounded pleased. "That is very responsible of you, sir."

"Can't waste away now, people depend on me," Tony replied flippantly.

AV-AV-AV


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: Hi. I'm gonna try my hardest to finish up IM3 before the 19th, because I'm going to Mexico to visit family for three weeks and I won't have any internet. Literally, back of beyond. So you may get extra postings! Woohoo! In the meantime, have this very short chapter...**

"Reports indicate the Mandarin is behind this latest bombing-"

"JARVIS, turn it off," Tony ordered.

The TV switched to a documentary about penguins.

Jaya glanced at Tony. "Shouldn't we do something about that? A giant evil spooky terrrorist sounds like an Avengers thing."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Steve called me this morning to talk about it. Apparently, the government thinks it can be handled by Iron Patriot alone."

"Who's Iron Patriot?" Jaya asked.

"War Machine."

"Wait, that's your friend Rhodey right?"

"Yep."

"Ah." Jaya tightened another bolt. "Are we going to do something anyway?"

"Yup. Steve is gonna pull the 'now look, son' on the President. Highly effective, I've been told."

AV-AV-AV

Jaya stared. And then stared some more. Then she moved to the stairwell and shouted down to the workshop. "Hey, Tony!"

"Yes, dear?" came the answering shout.

"What is this?"

"What is what?" he hollered.

"Can you come here?"

He came out of the workshop, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. "What's up?" He frowned at her hanging over the banister. "Safety violation!" he proclaimed, pointing at her.

"You're one to talk," she retorted. "What is that?" She pointed to the giant stuffed rabbit leaning against the wall.

"It's for Pepper," he said.

Jaya raised both eyebrows. She and Pepper had become friends over the last couple of weeks and, "I don't think that's her style," she said carefully.

He scowled at her. "JARVIS, why didn't you tell me earlier?" he demanded of the ceiling.

"You told me to butt out, sir," JARVIS replied placidly.

Jaya covered a giggle with her hand.

Tony glanced at her and snorted. "Fine, I admit it, not Pepper's style."

"You could try getting her an antique rocking chair," Jaya suggested. "Something with good back support, something restful."

He tugged at the end of her braid. "You just want to get your hands on more furniture."

She gave him a wide-eyed innocent look. "Who, me?"

"Brat," he said, without heat. "Fine. Order whatever, just, have it done by six okay, it's date night."

She nodded solemnly. "I won't let you down, Tony."

"Cool. Burn the rabbit." He went back downstairs.

Jaya tilted her head to look at the massive stuffed animal. "J?"

"Yes, miss?"

"Do you think he'd mind if I kept it?"

"I do not think Sir would notice, actually," JARVIS replied, sounding far too amused for a computer.

"Cool." She left it there for now and went to scour the internet for an appropriate gift.

She found a perfect antique rocking chair for sale further down the coast. "Delivery by five pm," Jaya said, satisfied. "I should have just enough time to restore it."

By the time Pepper came home the gift was polished, prepared, and Tony had tied a ribbon on the arm. "At least I can make some contribution to my own gift to my girlfriend," he muttered, no heat in his tone.

Pepper came in the door five minutes later. "Good eve...what the heck is that?" She pointed at the giant bunny still propped up against the wall.

Tony blanched, noticing its presence for the first time. "I thought I told you to burn it!"

Jaya burst into giggles. "Sorry, sorry, I meant to get it out of the way, but, it doesn't fit through the hall."

Pepper bit her lip in amusement as Tony scruffed his hands through his hair. "Ugh. Ignore that. This is yours." He presented Pepper with the rocking chair.

Jaya took the opportunity to escape from their 'horribly sappy date night'. She went to work on her homework and watch Dhoom 2.

AV-AV-AV


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: Woohoo, three days late but still within the week! Have some 'splosions.**

"Jaya, get in the car," Tony ordered, sweeping into the room. His face was a ghostly-pale.

"What happened?" Jaya asked, dropping her school stuff and following him.

"Happy's hurt."

"What happened?!"

They got in the car and were going a hundred miles an hour before Jaya even managed to put on her seatbelt. "He was tailing someone who works for AIM, he got caught in some kind of explosion at the Chinese Theater."

Jaya gasped. "Explosion? What kind of, what's AIM?"

"Aldrich Killian," Tony said grimly. "The worst kind of slime. He's been nosing around Stark Industries the last couple of days."

"Oh."

"And worse, the Mandarin is taking credit for it," Tony said.

"Oh." Jaya glanced at the three red lights they zoomed through. "So, the Avengers are getting involved now, right?"

"You bet they are. Clint and Bruce are on their way to us. Steve and Nat will follow with a SEAL team or something once they pinpoint the Mandarin's location."

"Is Pepper okay?" Jaya asked.

"She's fine."

They pulled up the hospital with a screeeech and jumped out of the car. Stark stalkd ahead, clearing the path. "Move, move, superhero coming through," he said, letting Jaya go first into Happy's private room in the ICU.

She paused on seeing him hooked up to all of the machines.

A doctor came in behind Tony, looking indignant. "Excuse me, who-" He fell silent when Jaya turned to face him. "Entropy?"

"Me," Jaya agreed.

"She can fix him," Tony informed the doctor. "He good to go?"

The doctor nodded. "He's stable for now. Go for it."

Jaya put her hands on Happy's upper arms and closed her eyes, concentrating and hyperfocusing on the damage. It was strange. A bright orange in her mind's eye. She started to reverse the entropy, erasing the physical damage from the explosion.

Under her hands, Happy woke up and started to gag on the respirator tube.

The doctors and nurses moved in to help him, taking the tube out and checking his vitals.

Jaya stumbled back, surprised by how much effort it had taken to heal him.

Tony caught her. "Sit, here we go. You did good, Jaya. You're okay."

Jaya waved her hands, trying to orient herself through the haze of spent energy. "I, there's something weird, it, it was fighting me."

"What?" Tony touched her cheek. "Look at me, kiddo, focus. What was fighting you?"

"The damage. The, I don't know." She dropped her head, unable to think. Her hands were burning faintly, like she'd stood too close to the oven.

"Jaya? Honey, can you hear me?"

"Nnh." The world faded out.

AV-AV-AV

She was burning. Everything was burning. Jaya woke up screaming, her hands on fire- her hands were on fire-

"FIRE! FIRE! GET THE-"

People screamed, alarms were blaring-

Flame retardant foam coated her field of vision, dousing the flames on her hands and the bed. There was a moment of stunned silence and people in white started to swarm around her. Jaya cringed back from them. "Tony!" she yelled, terrified.

More alarms began to go off as Jaya began to choke on the thick fumes from the flame retardant. Under the foam, her skin started to glow. She screamed, and her hands burst into flames.

Take two with the fire extinguisher. An alarm near her head was shrieking.

"Sedative!"

A sharp pain, and a cold wave of sleep drenched her brain.

The last thing she saw was her hands turn back to normal. The last thing she heard was Tony Stark yelling.

AV-AV-AV

Jaya bolted awake, her heart pounding in her chest, trying to fight against the fogginess in her brain. Her hands were still hot, burning-

"Jaya!"

The shout knocked the confusion and panic from her brain and she instinctively turned back time on her hands, staring at them as the flames subsided. Her skin was glowing orange.

"What is that?"

Jaya glanced up sharply. "Bruce! Bruce," tears started to well up in her eyes, "What is this? What's wrong with me?" She couldn't move her arms, couldn't risk touching anything if she suddenly caught on fire again, even if all she wanted to do was cry like a baby thanks to the sedative from before.

"I don't know." He touched her shoulder, squeezed it gently. "I don't know, but we're gonna figure it out. Are you in pain?"

Jaya shook her head. "No, I, it just, it's hot but right now it's okay." She stared at her hands in fascination. "Is Happy okay? He didn't- oh no, he didn't burn right?"

"No, Happy's fine, he's just down the hall." Bruce tapped his ear. "Tony, Jaya's awake, get down here right now. Bring mini-J."

Tony skidded through the door a few seconds later, a small cube under his arm. It looked like a speaker but it was a remote hub for JARVIS, fully capable. His eyes widened. "Again?!"

"She's stable for right now. Scans," Bruce ordered, snapping Tony out of his shock.

"Right, right." Tony set the cube down. "JARVIS, all the scans."

"One moment."

Jaya held still and watched JARVIS' blue beam sweep over her hands and arms. The blue beam subsided into the box. "Can I fix this now?" she asked, her voice quavering against her will.

"I have all the data I can acquire," JARVIS confirmed.

Bruce nodded. "Okay, Jaya, go ahead. Carefully, okay?"

She bit her lip and focused on turning her hands back all the way, to the state before she'd touched Happy. There. The burning feeling was gone. She couldn't even feel the phantom pain of heat. But there were two scorch marks on the bedsheeets that marked the existence of such an event. She looked up at Bruce. "Am I okay?"

He carefully took one of her hands in his and squeezed it gently. "Seems okay to me," he said, and wrapped her in a hug.

Jaya muffled a sob and clung to him. "That was really scary," she mumbled, burying her face in his shoulder.

Tony, looking supremely uncomfortable, started to back out of the room. "I'll just, uh, go tell the others."

"I already have, sir," JARVIS said.

Tony cast a betrayed look at the cube.

Jaya held out a hand. "Wait, hold on, what happened? What'd I miss?"

"Well you passed out, woke up when you caught on fire, caught on fire again, they injected you with enough sedative to down an elephant, you passed out, half-woke up twice more and you now have three elephant's worth of sedatives in you and your Ghost Rider impersonation scorched about five sets of hospital sheets. Oh, and Happy's fine, and Clint and Bruce are here," Tony said, gesturing to his Science Bro.

"And Tony threatened the Mandarin on national television," Bruce added mildly.

"What!"

"Happy got hurt and you had just caught on fire again," Tony said defensively. "I wasn't gonna let that stand."

"But-"

"Steve already yelled at me," Tony said, dismissing it with a wave. "And Coulson, and Pepper. I'm not doing that again." He stepped forward and took Jaya's other hand. "Whatever this is, we're gonna get to the bottom of it, okay?"

"Okay." She slumped against Bruce's side, suddenly exhausted. "I'm really tired."

Bruce helped her lay down. "Your body's still metabolizing that sedative. You're gonna be okay, just rest." He replaced the ruined blanket with another one. "Just rest."

"Let's decamp to the house," Tony suggested, "Happy's fine, she's fine, we don't need to stay here."

"Yeah. Let me get release forms."

Jaya grabbed Tony's hand before he could go, too. "Tony."

"Hm?"

"Should've waited," she murmured. "Coulda burnt the rabbit."

He choked on a laugh and leaned down to kiss her forehead. "Go to sleep, kiddo."

AV-AV-AV

She woke up in her own room, in her own bed. Still wearing the same clothes from- "JARVIS what day is this?"

"Tomorrow afternoon," he replied dryly.

"Ah." She made a beeline for the shower. One long, hot shower later, she changed into a pair of comfy jeans and a loose T-shirt. "J, where is everybody?"

"Agent Barton is running a perimeter sweep. Sir and Dr. Banner are in the lab, analyzing the explosion and your own readings, and Ms. Potts is in her room."

The doorbell rang.

Jaya looked up at the faint echo. "JARVIS, are we expecting anyone?"

"No," he replied. "It's no one we know. Let Sir open the door."

"Okay." Jaya went back to looking for her socks. She pulled on a pair of Hawkeye socks, some of the first Avengers merch to hit the stores. Natasha had gotten a pair for everybody as soon as they'd come on the market. Steve had the Entropy ones.

Raised voices made her look up. "Tony?" She left her room and headed to the living room, combing her fingers through her wet hair.

"We're not going out of town!" Tony said, gesturing stiffly inside the latest Iron Man suit.

"We are," Pepper insisted. "You threatened the Mandarin, two of our family got hurt already, you think they're not going to come after you?"

"We're staying put," Tony insisted. "This is our base on the West Coast for right now-"

"What about SHIELD? I'm sure they have somewhere-"

"I wouldn't touch their bugged bases with a twenty-foot pole-"

The stranger, some lady, noticed Jaya at about the same time she noticed the giant bunny still sitting against the far wall. "Who are you, and what is that? Is this normal?"

"Pretty much," Jaya said dryly. "Sorry, who are you?"

"Dr. Maya Hansen," the woman said. They shook hands, ignoring the bickering couple behind them.

The speakers in the ceiling crackled and Clint's voice filtered over the comm. "Get out! Get out! Bogies incoming!" he hollered.

"What?"

Jaya pointed at the news feed on the TV. "That's here."

There were three helicopters inbound. One of them released a small, pointy blob towards the house.

Bruce came up the stairs from the lab. "Um guys, there's news copters-"

Clint dashed into the house, vaulting over the sofa. "Not news!" he insisted, grabbing Jaya and doing an abrupt about-face towards the door. "Let's go, let's go!"

Everyone scrambled into action. A moment later the missile hit and the floors disintegrated around them. Clint practically threw Jaya under a table and Tony got the Iron Man suit onto Pepper. Bruce let loose a growl and turned into the Hulk. "Bad copters!" he growled, and jumped out of the crumbling house towards one of the helicopters.

Jaya noticed the ceiling caving in and held up her hands, using her powers to stabilize the building. "Go, go, go!" she shrieked.

Clint scooped up the unconscious Maya and bolted for the door. Jaya stayed on his heels, practically running backwards as she tried to keep the house solid against the barrage of weapons fire from the helicopters.

"Right behind you," Tony promised, two feet behind her and Pepper. "Go!"

Another missile hit the house. Pepper grabbed Jaya and zoomed out of the house, setting Jaya down next to Clint and Maya. Pepper dropped to the ground and the faceplate came up. "Tony!" she screamed, as the helicopters blitzed the house.

The Iron Man suit disassembled around her and zoomed into the house, hopefully to get Tony out of the house.

Jaya grabbed Pepper in a half-hug, keeping her from running back into the house. A burst of repulsor fire dropped one of the copters and Iron Man blasted out of the house to confront the other one. The suit dipped dangerously to the side.

"Jaya, can't you do something?" Clint asked, drawing his bow. He fired an exploding arrow at the remaining helicopters.

Jaya focused on the suit, turning back time on the damaged pieces. "I can't," she realized, "it's not finished." She turned her attention to the helicopter and focused on speeding up time. The helicopter's components began to rust before their eyes and it veered forward, crashing into the side of the house.

A moment later the rest of the house, part of the cliff, and the helicopter crumbled into the ocean, taking Iron Man with it.

"Tony!" Pepper tore away from Jaya's arms and ran to the cliffside, looking down into the rubble. Jaya joined her, ready to pull the whole house back up if she needed to. Clint ran over a second later, his eyes scanning the wreckage.

They waited long, anxious seconds. Then, "there!" Clint pointed out the slight movement and a second later the Iron Man suit streaked out of the water, headed inland at Mach 2.

"Where's he going?" Jaya asked.

"I don't know," Pepper replied, putting a hand to her mouth.

Jaya gasped. "Guys. Where's Bruce?" She turned back to the ocean and cupped her hands around her mouth. "Bruce! Hulk! Where are you?"

A green head popped up from the water and large green hands shoved pieces of drywall away. "Tiny!" he greeted her. "Tiny safe?"

"Safe," she called back. "Can you come over here?"

The Hulk leapt from the water and onto the cliffside, punching handholds into it with his fists. He climbed the cliff in two jumps and nearly squashed Clint getting to level ground.

"Easy, big guy," Clint said.

Hulk gave a grin and shook off the water. "Where Iron Man?" he asked.

"We don't know where he went," Jaya said. "Can we talk to Banner? We need to help him."

Hulk nodded, and without further ado, shrunk back into Bruce. Clint caught him before he could hit the ground. "Nice."

The next two hours were an endless parade of paramedics, firefighters, police officers, SWAT team, SI security, SHIELD agents posing as SI security, and hordes of reporters.

They were back in the hospital, everybody getting checked out for injuries. The only thing Jaya had was cuts from shards of glass.

Bruce woke up from his Hulk-out around hour three.

"Bruce! You okay?"

"Yeah, I..." He sat up slowly, glancing around. "Did I dream that, or, did the house-" Their expressions told him the truth. "Oh."

"Do you know where Tony would have gone?" Clint asked. "He lit out of here in the suit and we can't find him. JARVIS isn't responding, either."

Bruce frowned. "If Tony was conscious he would've stayed here. But if he was unconscious, the suit would have gone on a preprogrammed flight path."

"Where?" Jaya asked.

"We were looking at Tennessee," Bruce said. "Another bomb without bomb fragments. A suicide, or something. He was going to go check it out. it should be on the internet."

Clint nodded. "I'll let Cap know to meet him there." He stepped out.

 **A/N 2: Okay. I have some more stuff written, but it's five days till I leave, I'm still working, and I haven't paacccckkkeeeed or slept in three days, and I'm working on my other multi-universe crossover before I have to leave my laptop behind (seriously, where we're going is back of beyond. Fire ants, y'all. Death by snake is a serious possibility.) Point being, I may be able to churn out some more and post it before the 19th, I may not. It all depends.**

 **Also, who's seen Captain Marvel?! So good! And the new Endgame trailer *dies* I will have fun rewriting it, don't worry. Also I have had too much caffeine. I'll shut up now.**


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: Woo yeah, have this tiny chapter! Also, having to wake up at 2 in the morning is not cool. Not lookin' forward to that. But I'm gonna have a lot of time to write in the next few weeks so I'll see y'all in April.**

"All right, Dr. Hansen, let's have it." Clint folded his arms. "Why were you at the house?"

"I think my boss is working for the Mandarin," Maya said.

Pepper gaped. "What?"

Maya nodded. "Aldrich Killian. Something really strange is going on and I thought Tony might be able to help me."

"I thought you were a botanist."

Maya snorted. "What I actually am is a biological DNA coder running a team of forty out of a privately-funded think tank, but sure you can call me a botanist."

Clint raised an eyebrow. "And you thought a mechanical engineer was gonna solve your problems?"

"It's not like I could just approach Dr. Banner," Maya pointed out, gesturing to the man standing in the corner with Jaya.

Jaya spoke up. "Did you invent the burning stuff? The thing that made the man explode, that almost killed Happy and me?"

Maya shook her head. "Killian invented it. I just made it work."

"But it doesn't work all the time, does it?" Bruce asked. "The suspect in the bombing, and the one in Tennessee. Different unexplained explosions, these are all people?"

Maya nodded, looking miserable. "Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. We need to figure out how to stabilize it."

"And the Mandarin?" Clint asked. "Who is he in all this?"

Maya shrugged. "Killian answers to him. The Mandarin wanted human trials to start even though it wasn't ready, so we did. But now Killian is losing all his men because they're..."

"Exploding?" Clint finished.

"Yeah."

"What can we do?" Jaya asked.

Clint held up a hand, listening to his earpiece. "Steve found Tony. He's okay." He tilted his head to listen. "Yeah. Putting you on speaker." Clint put his phone on the table.

Steve's voice rang out a moment later. "All right, guys. The president has authorized the Avengers and Iron Patriot-"

There was a snort in the background, Tony undoubtedly.

"-to find and take down the Mandarin. Black Widow, Iron Man and I will coordinate with Iron Patriot, I'm sorry, can we just call him War Machine, that's a really dumb name-"

"Thank you!" They heard Tony give Steve a comradely slap on the back.

"-on that end," Steve continued seamlessly.

"I'm working on narrowing it down," Tony added. "Bruce, I'm sending you everything JARVIS had before the house went up. Check your email."

"Yup." Bruce brought up his tablet.

"Dr. Banner, you and Jaya can work on stabilizing Extremis. Hawkeye, if Mandarin still sees Iron Man as his principal threat he still might go after Pepper or Jaya. And now that Dr. Hansen is on our side we also need to protect her."

"Babysitting, got it," Clint said, his words light but his tone absolutely serious. "Any word on Coulson's ETA?"

"He should be there in an hour," Natasha said. "You guys get a quinjet."

"Awesome."

"Be careful," Steve warned.

"You too, Cap." Clint took it off speaker and said a final, "Uh-huh" before signing off. He looked at the others. "All right, let's do this."

They piled into two cars and headed for SI's labs. "Let's keep everyone in one place," Clint decided. "Pepper, can you do your work from down here?"

"Yeah. I just need to get my laptop."

"I'll get it," Happy volunteered. He had refused to stay at the hospital for observation any longer.

Jaya folowed the two scientists to the workshop. She played assistant as the two bio-engineers analyzed Extremis.

"Fascinating," Maya said, her eyes lighting up as she ran through JARVIS's scans of Jaya. "You accidentally infected yourself with Extremis through exposure to the remaining particles on Hogan's skin. And you managed to contain it with your powers."

Jaya didn't like the gleam in the woman's eye.

Neither did Bruce, apparently, "Jaya, can you get us all some tea, maybe?" he asked.

"Tikhe. Sure." She left the lab with a sigh of relief.

Clint gave her a concerned look. "You okay, kiddo?"

"Yeah, I'm just tired."

"I bet." He ruffled her hair. "Take a break if you need to. Bruce can definitely handle Dr. Pyromania."

"Don't call her that," Jaya scolded half-heartedly. "She might actually be sincere."

"Maybe."

AV-AV-AV

"How're we doin', buddy?"

"Mostly repaired, Sir. However I seem to be saying the wrong cranberry."

Steve shot Tony a look. "Is he going to be okay?" he asked.

Tony shrugged it off. "JARVIS is fine, he'll pull through. I thought you were supposed to be teaching the kid some boxing moves?"

"Natasha took over," Steve said dryly. "Her way is more effective."

"Hm. How's Jaya?"

"Fine, as of five minutes ago," Steve said. "You're being extremely mother-hen like, even more than me. Are you okay?"

"I'm always fine," Tony replied flippantly, though it was obvious he was lying. "I'm worried about Jaya. She was having nightmares before this whole thing started, and you know, the whole catching fire thing. She's my tax dependent, you know."

"Yeah." Steve squeezed Tony's shoulder briefly. "She's a tough kid. She'll be okay."

Tony jerked his head in a nod. "JARVIS, that better?"

"Mucho mejor, señor."

The two men shared a dismayed look. "Maybe you'd better go with Natasha to interrogate the farmer while I work on this," Tony said.

"Uh, yeah."


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: Hello! I survived Mexico! Didn't gain weight! Didn't get sunburned! Woohoo! And then I got home and got a respiratory infection so I had time to type all this up! Not woohoo! But the fever's finally gone so I believe this all makes sense. Spoilers for Iron Man 3.**

The West Coast team got about three seconds warning. "Agent Barton, I'm reading multiple lifesigns on the peri-"

"Get do-"

The lab doors exploded inwards and flash bombs flooded the room. Clint grabbed Jaya and threw her at Bruce, who was further down the lab.

Six armed men entered the smoky lab. One of them shot at Bruce and the scientist went down like a rock. "Bruce!" Jaya pulled the dart from his skin.

Clint took out three of the men befores somebody managed to clock him from behind. He faded out.

"Clint!" Jaya shrieked, as she, Pepper, and Bruce were hauled away.

"Uh, shush," Maya told her, and held a cloth up to Jaya's face.

"No, get away-" Jaya snarled, managing to elbow one of the men in the gut. The fumes from the cloth made her dizzy and she jerked her head away. "No!" She blacked out.

AV-AV-AV

Jaya woke to the musical tones of Pepper Potts, the Ultimate Lady, coldly informing someone of their slow, torturous, and detailed demise, both corporate and corporeal. It was inspiring and uplifting, and almost made Jaya feel better about waking up chained to a pole.

Maya Hansen was there with half a dozen AIM flunkies. Aldrich Killian was the one Pepper was threatening to disembowel with a blunt hairpin. Bruce was still out cold on the floor, an IV hooked up to his wrist.

Jaya cleared throat. "Pepper?"

"Jaya! You okay?"

"Uh... yes?" Jaya flexed her wrists in the restraints. "What'd I miss?"

"Nothing much," Killian replied. He walked over to Bruce and yanked the IV out of his arm and kicked him in the side. "Hey. Wake up."

"Don't touch him!" Jaya growled.

Bruce came to consciousness pretty fast. He pulled himself up to sit against the wall, holding his head. "Wh-" He registered the situation, the girls in chains, and his eyes flashed green.

"Now, now, Dr. Banner," Killian said cheerfully. He moved to Pepper's side and p roduced a syringe from his coat pocket. "In the time it would take you to Hulk out and smash this lab, I will have injected Miss Potts, here-"

"No, we agreed no more testing on humans!" Maya protested.

"-So I'd suggest you stay. Calm." Killian smiled, all teeth. "Are we clear?"

Bruce grunted and got to his feet. "What do you want?"

"Your assistance. I was hoping for Tony STark but frankly you're even better. No learning curve. Make us an army, Dr. Banner, or your little girlfriends here won't like me very much."

"I literally could not like you any less," Jaya said, deadpan.

Killian snorted. "You've been hanging out with Stark too much." He patted her head patronizingly. "And don't even think of escaping, Miss Entropy. If you dissolve those chains, I will start shooting random people, maybe even Miss Potts here. I don't think your powers extend to resurrection, do they?" He smiled at her smugly and turned away. "Get to work, Doctor Banner!"

"Or what, you're going to kill the president?" Bruce asked laconically. "Oops, was that your final plan? Tony's way ahead of you."

Killian smirked and injected Pepper with the syringe. She yelped and managed to knee him in the gut. "You have twelve hours to figure out how to stabilize Extremis or your CEO is going to get a little explode-y." He left the room, all swagger.

"Pepper?" Jaya reached out, straining her fingertips to reach. "If I can reach her, I can get-" She was too short by three feet. "Bruce!"

Another of the lackeys held up a dart gun. "I don't think so, folks."

Bruce's eyes flashed green. He took a deep breath and set his jaw. "Give me all your work and get out of my way," he growled, shouldering the lackey and Maya Hansen away.

Jaya watched Pepper worriedly. "Pep?"

"I'm okay," Pepper said, her whole body shuddering.

Jaya bit her lip. She could break out but Pepper wouldn't be able to run, and they didn't know if Killian actually did have civilian hostages...

Bruce gave her a look and shook his head.

Jaya chewed on her lip. They'd just have to wait.

Several hours later, maybe less, Jaya couldn't tell, a new person came in. An older gentleman of Chinese origin with rings on his fingers and bracelets on his wrists under the elaborate robes. "Dr. Banner, how good of you to come. Are you stalling?"

Bruce frowned. "Who are you?"

"The one who holds life and death in his hands," the man said. "I am the Mandarin."

Pepper revived slightly at this new voice and let out a soft gasp. "Mr. Chen? CEO of Prometheus?"

"AIM's business partner," Bruce realized. "Also a weapons supplier to the US government. And to China, presumably."

"Of course. And until recently, Mr. Stark's fierce competitor."

"Of course."

"I now own the industry," the Mandarin said smugly. He walked over to the table. "So, doctor. Are you stalling for time?"

Bruce was a terrible liar when it wasn't board games, so Natasha had advised him to either stay silent or always tell the truth. Less messy that way. "Kind of, yeah," Bruce admitted.

The Mandarin nodded. "As you are entitled to do." With reflexes faster than a supersoldier, he grabbed a dose of the serum and injecd it into Jaya's neck. "She is also entitled to die if you stall, Doctor." He tilted his head, listening to something in his ear, and swept from the room.

Jaya closed her eyes against the burning of the serum as it pushed through her veins. "Ow," she complained, and her skin glowed in response. "Oh, no."

"Stay calm," Bruce advised. "We'll get out of-"

The far wall exploded, sending AIM lackeys flying. SHIELD agents came flooding in, led by Clint and Coulson. Clint swept the room and came to free them. "You okay?" he asked.

Jaya rubbed at her wrists. "Yeah. Oh! You need to find the Mandarin, he's here."

"We missed him coming out, there's a quinjet on their tail," Clint said grimly. He helped a barely-conscious Pepper onto a gurney, his scowl betraying his worry.

"We still need to stabilize Extremis," Bruce said.

Coulson loooked at the glow under Pepper's skin and the sweat on Jaya's forehead and nodded. "Bring what you need."

Bruce swept a stack of files into the arms of a SHIELD agent and added a couple of tablets. He wrapped his arm around Jaya's shoulders. "Let's go."

They got on the quinjet. Clint tapped his earpiece. "Got the lost sheep, we're heading to you now."

"Copy that. How are they?" Cap asked.

"Big Green is fine. The other two are a little, ah, feverish."

"Understood," Cap said grimly. "We have the President and the VP in a secure location, get-" An explosion sounded. "...and, one of the guards just combusted. Great. Let us know when you're close."

"Copy that." Clint went to the harry the pilot.

Bruce held up a couple of scanners. "Jaya, can you get rid of the Extremis in your body, but really slowly so I can see how it infects the cells?"

"Uh, I think so."

AV-AV-AV

By the time they got to the East Coast, Jaya was already exhausted from fighting against the Extremis in her own body. The President and VP had been moved to safety (again), and the Avengers were fighitng the Mandarin, Killian, and like twenty supersoldiers on an oil tanker. Which was on fire.

"So guess what?" Extremis fire burns through armor," Tony informed them, as the quinjet circled above the tanker. "We're pinned down."

"We need a new strategy," Steve added, hoarse from the smoke.

Pepper held up a hand. "I haven't died yet, so, maybe we ecan fight fire with fire?"

Coulson raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?"

"No, but, Tony's in danger."

"Fair enough." Coulson opened the ramp.

"Drop me too, I'll start putting out fires," Jaya offered, chugging a protein drink.

Coulson frowned at her. "Be careful."

Pepper and Jaya hopped out of the jet. Rhodey and Tony caught them and brought them down.

Cap nodded a brief welcome. "Clint, focus on the Mandarin from above. Rhodey, cover Pepper. Widow, Jaya. Tony, go right, I'll go left, we'll flank the Mandarin. Bruce, do not Hulk out."

"No problem," Bruce said shakily, wincing as the oil tanker's superstructure started to disintegrate.

Jaya focused on turning back the fires, or in some cases speeding them up so they'd burn out. She tried not to think about Natasha ruthlessly covering her back, or the rest of the team charging at flaming monsters. One thing's for sure, this was definitely putting her off bonfires for a while.

"Oh, that's just not fair!" Tony yelled, making her jump.

"Uh, guys, where'd the Mandarin go?" Clint asked.

"He vanished," Steve said. "Like on Star Trek."

"How come the bad guys get teleportation!?" Tony hollered at the universe, waving his hands.

The universe didn't deign to answer.

They got Killian though, and a lot of AIM and Prometheus personnel. Pepper took great satisfaction in breaking the former's nose.

Jaya reversed Extremis on Pepper on the way to New York for debriefing. She dozed against Steve's shoulder until they docked with the Helicarrier.

The WSC was not pleased the Mandarin got away. Three minutes into their rant, Steve spoke up. "Well, considering you've let a weapons manufacturer stockpile weapons in your country for twenty years and terrorize an entire district before expanding operations, I don't see how that's our fault."

"Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth," Tony muttered to Rhodey. "How come he can do that and not me?"

"Because he's Cap."

"Ugh."

The Mandarin was added to SHIELD's bailiwick due to teleportation shenanigans and everybody retired to Avengers Tower to wash off the smoke smell and watch the news coverage.

"We're all gonna get medals," Clint said, taking a swig of his beer.

Tony suddenly sat bolt upright, dislodging Pepper from his side. "Oh! I just realized we don't have a house."

"That one's on you," Pepper informed him sleepily, tugging him back down and nuzzling her face into his neck.

"Think I'd prefer the cold for a little bit," Jaya added, curled up in between Bruce and Clint. "You owe me another giant rabbit."

Tony scoffed. "Help me rebuild and I will buy you a fleet of giant stuffed animals."

Steve glanced from one to the other. "How big are we talking?" he asked.

"You could sell it as real estate," Pepper said helpfully.

Jaya nodded.

They lapsed into silence as they watched the news reporter go on about oil production.

"I kind of want one," Steve said, during commercials. "Can I design your color palette?"

Tony snorted. "Sure."

AV-AV-AV

 **A/N 2: Next chapter goes back to regularly scheduled programming, I hope.**


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: Hey, look at that, only two days late. I'm still fighting a virus and my work schedule is all kinds of messed up, and I'm going to be moving volunteer groups and RL's about to get twice as crazy. I'm still thinking updates once or twice a week, depending on if I start posting my other story or not. We'll see. Anyway, enough about me. Enjoy!**

The kind of people who see mutants, people with superpowers or super-powered suits, and think "You know, I'd kind of like to help that person get over their trauma", are a special kind of crazy and were few and far between. He'd tried to find Clint and Natasha a therapist, but they weren't having it. Any mental health issues were handled strictly within the trio themselves. Fine. The rest of the Avengers hadn't seemed inclined towards therapy or even talking about their own problems, either. But Coulson had found one that Steve had taken a shine to, and counted that as a win.

And now that Tony Stark, Master of Repressing and Internalizing Emotions and Traumatic Things, had pulled him aside and asked him to find therapists for both himself and Jaya, Coulson had almost gaped at him before replying with a mild, "Consider it done."

Internally, of course, he was resigning himself to lots of sleepless nights. Because not only did the potential therapist have to go through SHIELD's extensive vetting system, he/she also had to go through Stark Industries' vetting which equaled that of a small, paranoid country, and be personally interviewed by Coulson, Pepper Potts, and Captain America. Take a wild guess about who would be the scariest out of the three. It wasn't Coulson's hero.

It actually turned out to be a lot easier than he'd imagined. One, because Jaya had actually met Steve's therapist at some point and the kind woman with dry humor was completely fine about taking on Jaya as well. Two, because Coulson had forgotten about JARVIS and it was JARVIS who narrowed the list down to three.

So every Thursday at 3:15 in the afternoon, Tony went to his appointment. He didn't say anything about them, like Steve and Jaya didn't say anything about their own respective appointments, but he did seem to be getting more rest.

Now if only they could steal Dr. Ross out from under her father's thumb, Coulson would be content with four out of seven.

AV-AV-AV

"I think, I'm ready to get this thing out."

Conversation across the table stopped and everyone looked at Tony. Steve raised an eyebrow. "Say again?" he asked.

Tony cleared his throat. "I think it's time for me to get rid of the arc reactor."

There was a pause for consideration and then, "Is it safe?" Steve asked.

"Not a hundred percent but safe enough, and with Bruce's research on Extremis and Jaya's help fast-forwarding the process, it would cut down on recovery time."

Steve nodded slowly. "Okay."

"Okay. Cool. Pass me the potatoes."

Of course it wasn't that easy. They had to find a surgeon and actually make the non-explosive-ey Extremis and Jaya had to brush up on her human anatomy and SI stuff had to be wrapped up and when surgery day came, the Avengers closed ranks around their team member and silently dared anyone to attack a vulnerable Tony Stark. No one was dumb enough to take them up on their offer.

Pepper paced about six miles during the surgery. She didn't even take her high heels off. Finally, Steve intervened. "Pepper, Pep, hey, let's sit down for a second." He gently shepherded her to a couple of chairs that were in an alcove, away from the rest of the Avengers who were totally-not-hovering around the waiting room. He got Pepper to sit down, and took her hands in his. "He's going to be okay. He has the best medical team in the world and he's got Bruce and Jaya. He's going to be okay."

"I know," Pepper said shakily. "But, it's the arc reactor, Steve."

"I know." He squeezed her hands gently. "But he doesn't need it to be Iron Man."

"I know! And that's why I'm..." She curled into Steve's side. Steve was everybody's favorite to hug, except maybe Thor. "He's going to be okay," Pepper said quietly.

"Yes he is." Steve wrapped an arm around Pepper. "And we're gonna be there for him every step of the way. Mostly you, because I can't imagine dealing with a cranky, bed-bound Tony for more than twenty minutes."

Pepper choked out a giggle.

Steve grinned, pleased.

AV-AV-AV

"I am SO BORED."

Jaya barely glanced up from her textbook. "Go to sleep, Tony."

"I am SO BORED," he repeated, giving the pillow next to his arm a half-hearted smack.

"It's 2 in the morning, Tony, you shouldn't even be awake with the painkillers you're on, go to sleep."

"I have a high tolerance and I am SO BORED I'm going to DIE."

This dramatic declaration was met with a tolerant sigh. Jaya finally put the tablet down and sat on the edge of the bed. "Okay, what do you want to talk about?"

"Let's talk about everything," Tony suggested. "Ships and shoes and sealing wax and cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings."

"So you were awake when Steve was reading to you," Jaya realized, and smirked at him.

"Don't tell him."

"I won't."

"I think it's nice," Tony said. "He has a nice reading voice. And he gets all Brooklyn-y. Do you think people remember that Steve is an Irish Catholic from Brooklyn? I don't think people really remember that. Someone asked me the other day what Cap's point of view on religious tolerance was. Where do you think he got his team from? A Baptist church? Someone else asked if Cap has ever sweared, swore, or not. I mean, not that he would in front of you, because you're a kid, but he does. I mean, he did. I mean, he was in the Army for crying out loud. But you know, it's bad form on a mission, so, yeah, I can see why people would think that. But still, like, Irish from Brooklyn, you know?"

He rambled to his heart's content until he put himself to sleep.

Jaya smoothed the blankets out and looked over at Steve who was sitting in the far corner, silently wheezing with laughter. "I think he forgot that we're tag-teaming him," she remarked. "And I think he forgot that he's not supposed to be your second-biggest fan."

Steve did a couple more silent wheezing seal-flaps before he got himself together and he sat up, smiling fondly. "I won't tell him if you won't," he said.

"Deal."

They played UNO until Tony woke up again a couple hours later. He didn't seem to remember anything he'd been rambling about earlier. "I'm bored," he complained. "Steve? Jaya? Why are you laughing at me? I'm BORED."

AV-AV-AV

While he was recovering from major surgery, Tony had a lot of time to work on the Malibu reconstruction. True to their words, the Avengers did help out. Mostly Steve and Jaya, who had the artistic and structural knowledge, respectively, to help him out. Clint also was a major contributor to the security systems for the new house.

"Why is it bigger than the old one?" Jaya finally asked, when the blueprints were completed. "Who needs ten bedrooms?"

"Us, duh," Tony said. "You think I'm gonna build our West Coast base without enough room for newbies?"

"Does Pepper know her house is being turned into a base?" Jaya asked.

He waved a hand. "She's fine with it."

"Okay, then." Jaya stood up as Natasha and Bruce entered the room. "Hey, guys."

"Hi. Go have lunch."

"Yes, mom," Jaya snarked teasingly.

Natasha just grinned and swatted at her on the way out.

Jaya had some lunch and then went to her room to finish her unit on the Cold War. She entered her apartment and froze. Every flat surface was covered in massive stuffed animals. She literally had a fleet of giant stuffed animals in her living room, her bedroom, her study, and her workshop.

Jaya threw herself at the nearest stuffed animal and laughed until she almost cried. Then she hightailed it up to Steve's apartment to see if he'd seen his present.

Steve had, in fact, seen his present. He was currently faceplanted on top of the giant, fifteen foot teddy bear, half-buried under one of its arms. "Steve?" Jaya asked cautiously, wondering if he'd accidentally suffocated under all that plush fur.

Steve lifted his head, looking pleased as punch. "Tony's my favorite person ever," he said, and went back to faceplanting.

"Same," Jaya drawled, and snapped a quick picture of him for purposes. She then went back to her own quarters and tried to figure out how the world she was going to arrange them all to see her floor again.

She could barely drag them around due to lack of space, so she piled half of them into a corner of the living room and then took a flying leap. She sunk into the pile of softness and dug her way down until she had a little nap hole. She tugged at an arm until it covered up the light, and then promptly got to studying on her tablet. She fell asleep a little while later.

"Jaya? You in here?"

Jaya woke to the sound of voices in her apartment. She blinked lethargically, wondering why it was so dark.

"JARVIS?" It was Bruce.

"Miss Marcus is in the room," JARVIS confirmed, sounding amused.

Jaya flailed around until she managed to poke her head up. She blinked against the lights. "Wh's up?" she asked.

Bruce held up his phone and took a picture, grinning. "There you are. Dinner."

"Oh, okay." She more or less crawled out of her nap nest and stumbled to her feet.

Clint caught her by the arm before she could fall. "Nice. I kind of want one, now."

"You can have one," Jaya offered. "I have, too many."

"Can you regift a gift?" Clint asked dubiously.

"I do not think Sir would mind," JARVIS piped up.

Clint nodded slowly. "Can I have the blue one?"

Jaya grinned. "Sure."

Slowly, three stuffed animals disappeared over the course of the day, one to each of the remaining Avengers' apartments. Tony, now up and about, just grinned every time he saw one.

AV-AV-AV


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N: Have smol chap. Thanks to lovely reviewer who gave me the idea for this piece of sad fluff. Also, we stray further away from MCU canon every day, woohoo.**

"What do you mean leaving?" Clint asked heatedly.

"I've been given a new assignment," Coulson said evenly. "A team of misfits."

"You have a team of misfits!" Tony protested. "Us! I'm pretty sure there's no way you can find six other people who are as weird as we are!"

"I know," Coulson said, "but you've gelled as a team, so my superiors are moving me to a different assignment."

Tony's eyes narrowed. "I'm gonna take Fury's other eye."

"I'll hold him," Steve promised.

Coulson held up a hand. "We are not blinding the Director of SHIELD."

"Not even a little bit?"

"No. And it wasn't his decision, anyway." Coulson sighed. "Apparently, the WSC believes that I am too 'lenient' with you."

They gaped, affronted. "But you make THOR do paperwork!" Tony protested. "No one is stricter than you!"

Coulson looked faintly pleased at that.

It was Natasha that picked up on it, of course. "What's the real reason?" she asked, poker-faced.

Coulson sighed. "There's an 084."

"Well let's go," Clint said. "Let's handle it."

"It's a person," Coulson interrupted. "She needs the exact opposite help of six superheroes crashing into her van."

Cue a round of pouts, and dear heaven, Steve Rogers' pout could kill a man.

"Who's gonna be our liason?"

"Hill."

Protests from everyone. "Not Hill!" Clint whined.

"We like Hill, remember?" Coulson reminded them.

"But she's mean," Tony stated.

"You're grown superheroes, you can handle it," Coulson replied blandly.

"At least it's not anybody else," Natasha pointed out.

"When are you leaving?" Clint asked.

"Tomorrow."

"WhAT?" Tony demanded. "JARVIS, order everybody's favorites and all the champagne. We gotta party. Oh, and apple cider for the midget."

"Technically, I could just reverse the alcohol in my bloodstream," Jaya pointed out.

"NO," the adults chorused.

"Don't even think about it," Bruce said.

"I won't," Jaya promised. "I just like watching Steve pull the disappointed eyebrows."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Whatever."

AV-AV-AV

The Avengers and Pepper gave Coulson his goodbye-and-come-back-soon party, which didn't wrap up until 3 in the morning, when people began to straggle back to their apartments.

Bruce carried Jaya back to her room and tucked her under the covers. "Sleep tight," he murmured.

"Bruce?"

"Yeah?"

"Wake me up before Coulson leaves," Jaya requested in soft, mumbled Hindi, still half-asleep.

"I will." Bruce closed the door to her room. He tripped over one of those ridiculous stuffed animals on the way out and rolled his eyes.

AV-AV-AV

Coulson left the Tower at 0700 the next morning. He was impeccably dressed and unruffled, unlike the mess of superheroes that came out in sweats and pajamas to say goodbye.

Bruce, Jaya, and Steve got their goodbyes out of the way, with handshakes, hugs, and "stay in contact", and then they moved off to the side to let Clint and Natasha say goodbye.

"Strike Team Delta is still a thing," Coulson said, giving his two agents solid hugs. "You need me, and I'm there."

"Same for you, boss," Clint said, eyes suspiciously bright. "Anything happens, you've got the Avengers on speed dial."

They nodded to each other.

Coulson looked at Natasha. "Agent Romanov."

She scoffed and punched him lightly in the shoulder. "Don't do anything stupid," she said, and gave him another hug.

"Take care of one another," Coulson said, and then nodded to the rest of the Avengers. "And that includes them."

"Of course."

Coulson glanced out to the balcony, where a quinjet was waiting. "Gotta go."

"Bye, Agent Agent!" Tony hollered obnoxiously, just as Coulson slipped out of the doors.

They caught Coulson's eye-roll, and then he was gone.

"Who wants pancakes?" Steve asked, slinging an arm around Clint and grabbing him in a brotherly headlock.

Jaya sidled over to Natasha, who was standing stoically watching the quinjet go away. Jaya put her arm around Natasha's waist and leaned into her.

Natasha returned the gesture and brushed a kiss against Jaya's cheek. "Come on, before Clint eats all the pancakes." They walked back into the common room and into the kitchen. "So," Natasha said loudly, drawing everyone's attention, "what prank are we pulling on our new liason to SHIELD?"

Everyone, even Steve, grinned.

 **A/N 2: Don't know if I'm gonna be able to post next week. My mom's leaving on Tues to take care of my grandma who's having major surgery, so it's gonna be real hectic in RL.**


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N: Hi! Have this incredibly smol but plot-forwarding scene. RL has been horrendous. All of you who have ever been personally victimized by aggressive allergies raise your hand. I literally cannot leave the house for more than five minutes. And you know that meme about "Benadryl, you can't sneeze if you're unconsious"? Yeah. That one. Anywho. You're not here to listen to me moan.**

Clint entered the common floor and found Jaya sitting at the table, staring at her computer screen. "What're you doing?" he asked.

"I'm done," Jaya said, dazed.

"Done with..."

"High school."

Clint blinked. "It's March."

"I know, but, I'm homeschooled. I just got my final grades." She showed him the computer screen. "See?"

"...diploma in the mail... 3 to 5 business days..." He hugged her and pressed a kiss to her hair. "Congrats! Good job! JARVIS! Tell everybody the news and order some pizza. We've gotta celebrate!" He wiped a fake tear from his eyes. "Our little baby's graduated high school."

Jaya shoved him, looking pleased. "It's not a big deal, Clint."

"Not a big deal?! Yes it is! You're the only one who's managed to make it through the entire high school curriculum without going rogue! I'm calling Coulson. He'll be thrilled."

The rest of the Avengers filtered in and smothered Jaya with hugs and high-fives. Tony changed the order of pizza to Indian food and champagne. "You still don't get any, squirt. You're getting sparkling cider."

They feasted merrily and Tony and Steve got back into the Yale/Harvard argument.

"What do you actually want to do?" Bruce asked Jaya.

She leaned into his side. "I don't know. Maybe not Yale. I don't..." She trailed off.

"Right." Her father went there. Bruce put an arm around her. "You could always take a gap year."

"What is a gap year?"

"Take a year off before going to college. Go out, see the world."

"That sounds nice."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Bruce nodded slowly. "Okay. We'll make it happen."

"Cool."

 **A/N 2: So the gap year is coming. Slowly. It depends on if the pollen count dies down enough for me to think. It also depends on my work schedule and if I finish my digital art portfolio. But this story isn't being abandoned. Just, Benadryl'ed. Thanks!**


	17. Chapter 17

**A/N: Woo! Feeling better, kinda not really, but anyway, have Gap Year and fluff.**

Jaya's Gap Year immediately became the only subject on everybody's minds.

"If you could just sign the paperwork," Hill begged, shoving the tablet into Stark's face.

He brushed her off as one would a fly and continued talking to Jaya. "Why won't you take the jet?" he complained. "It has a pool!"

"I want to do it like a normal person," Jaya said. "I'm considering backpacking through Europe."

"NO," three out of four Avengers said loudly.

"I'll go with you," Steve offered.

"NO," came the chorus again, this time including Hill.

"If you're going anywhere you need an adult," Hill said. "Mr. Fistfight over here doesn't count."

"I think you just insulted the American Way," Tony said, mock-offended.

"I feel insulted," Steve said cheerfully. "It's not my fault people are still idiots. Can I come anyway? I want to go to the Louvre and not be under threat by Nazis."

Tony and everyone else turned to stare at him. "What."

"The last time I was in France I went to the Louvre," Steve said. "I got to tour the basements before we had to leave again."

"That's just sad. JARVIS, prep the jet!"

Hill sighed.

"I'm coming with you," Natasha declared.

Clint nodded enthusiastically. "She knows the best spots."

Jaya smiled. "Okay."

"We're not taking the jet," Natasha added, giving Stark a glare.

He scowled. "Peasants."

AV-AV-AV

They went to Paris by way of London, first. They hit London, Natasha introduced them to a proper High Tea, and Steve ate the shop's entire supply of little cakes. He didn't regret it.

They went to the British Museum and went on a guided tour like normal people. Okay, technically like superheroes in disguise. As they wandered with their fellow tourists, Natasha murmured the provenance of some of the, ah, sketchier, items in the tour.

Jaya did not want to know how many times that piece had been the cause of murder. Seriously.

Then they went to Scotland, and Jaya spent the entire time wrapped up in two sweaters and a giant coat. "It's cold," she said, hiding behind Steve as the wind gusted. "Beautiful, but coooold."

They lost Steve in the Louvre. One second, he was with them, gushing over brushstrokes, the next, some curator showed up and towed him away with promises of special passes and archives and sketchbook supplies.

"He's fine," Natasha assured Jaya. "I made a couple calls. Okay, Tony told Pepper to make a couple calls. But I made him."

"You're the best friend," Jaya said admiringly.

AV-AV-AV

"Ah, Prague." Natasha sighed. "So many nice statues."

Jaya ducked behind one of these aforementioned statues. "Why are they shooting at us!?" She flinched as a bullet whistled past her ear.

"No idea. I have a lot of enemies."

"In Prague? On a Sunday? At a Museuem?"

"Yup. Duck, malyshka."

Jaya ducked and Black Widow went out swinging. Jaya couldn't watch.

"Clear," Natasha said after a moment.

Jaya stepped out from behind the statue to find all five assailants unconscious on the marble floors. "Hm."

"Sound pulse on my Widow Bites," Natasha said dryly. "They're called Sound bites. Stark thinks he's cute. Help me tie them up?"

They sat on them till the authorities arrived, and then Natasha glared their way out of there. "So the museum's a bust, what do you want to do?" she asked as they strolled along an idyllic avenue.

Jaya grinned. "Ice cream?"

"I know the best place," Natasha promised.

Jaya laughed and gave her a hug. "I'm so glad you agreed to come with me."

Natasha smiled fondly. "Who else? Clint has trailer trash standards, Bruce doesn't do crowds, and Tony is too famous to wander the streets. On our way back to New York we need to pull Steve out of the Louvre, though."

"Are you kidding? By the time we get back to France, the Louvre is already going to have put him in his own exhibit," Jaya snickered. "And he won't leave, either."

"Probably not. We'll have to bribe him with cookies."

They shared a glance and cracked up.

AV-AV-AV

They did manage to extract Steve from the midst of the art scene, and then Tony called them to the airport.

His personal jet was waiting for them. So were Tony, Pepper, Bruce, and Clint. "Who wants to go to the South Pacific?" Tony asked, grinning.

Jaya's hand shot up. "Me!"

"Europe too cold for you, kiddo?" Clint asked, tugging at her sweater.

"I'm from India, Clint. It doesn't get cold over there."

"Good point. You bring me a present?"

"Natasha did."

"Aw, yesss." Clint sprung for Natasha's bag. She sidestepped him neatly and smacked the back of his head. "Ow."

They sat down and buckled up, and Steve showed them his work. Pepper had JARVIS upload the finished pieces to Steve's portfolio.

Jaya leaned against Bruce's side as he scrolled through her pictures. He smiled at a cheesy selfie of her and Natasha eating ice cream. "So does Tony really own a private island?" she asked.

He put an arm around her. "Nope, only a piece of one."

"Nice."

It was nice. It was straight out of a vacation commercial. A private villa on the beach, deserted except for some of Tony's robot wait-staff, and an endless supply of tiny drink umbrellas.

Jaya could not be removed from the beach. And once Clint showed Steve the sand sculpture contests, neither could Steve. Tony, surprisingly, offered his engineering expertise for structural purposes.

Jaya just entropied it backwards when pieces of it crumbled. But mostly she and Pepper and Natasha laid on lounge chairs and napped.

Clint tried to surf. Tried, being the operative word.

Bruce spent most of his time napping, too.

 **A/N 2: Stay tuned for more island-y adventure besides Clint being horribly sunburned.**


	18. Chapter 18

**A/N: Struggling with events and sleeping and writer's block. Have this teeny Beach Interlude.**

It was a beautiful day. And then the screaming started. "Hey, isn't this our stretch of beach?" Clint inquired, as people started running towards them.

Steve stood up and squinted into the distance. "Is that... a giant wave?"

Everyone shot out of their chairs. "JARVIS!" Tony hollered.

"There seems to be an energy pulse running through the water," JARVIS reported, from Tony's portable speaker.

As they watched, the water began stretching out tendrils towards the people. "And, that's our cue," Steve said, resigned.

The super-spies were armed and the shield was being used as a drink holder- Steve flipped it up and let the mojitos fall into the sand. Tony called an Iron Man suit towards him. Bruce hovered uncertainly and Jaya looked at Steve.

"I have a panic room," Tony offered.

Steve nodded. "Let's try and redirect the water, get the civilians into the panic room."

"What good is an arrow gonna do against the ocean, Cap?" Clint asked.

Steve sighed. "I have no idea, Clint, but whoever's controlling the water might mark us as a bigger threat."

"Copy that."

And then the battle was upon them. Bruce and Clint ushered people into the house. Jaya focused and managed to reverse the wave, keeping it at a good fifty feet from the Avengers.

"How long can you hold that?" Cap asked.

Jaya grimaced as the water began to shift higher, breaking her concentration momentarily. "Uhhhh, fifteen minutes? I don't know how much surface area or water pressure I can hold..."

"Okay. Steve looked at the spies. "Take the quinjet, try and track whatever signal is controlling this water."

"On it."

Tendrils of water began to emerge from the wall of ocean that Jaya was holding back. She couldn't get them to reverse. "Cap!"

He smacked one of the tendrils with his shield and it just dripped around the shield and then reformed.

"Does anyone else feel like we're in a Doctor Who episode?" Clint asked, hovering over them with the quinjet.

"That creepy one from Mars?" Jaya said.

"Yup, that's the one."

Iron Man decided to take a different tactic and start boiling the water with his repulsors. It boiled away, all right, but what could he do against the literal ocean? "Uh, Cap, I think we're gonna need a change of tactics, here."

"Same," Jaya muttered, and fell down to one knee as the water surged and she had to expand the square footage of her entropify-ness (it is too a word, Bruce). Sweat beaded on her face and dripped off her chin. "Steve, I can't-"

"Retreat," Steve ordered. "Tony, is your shelter waterproof?"

"Completely hermetically sealed," Tony confirmed.

Steve nodded. "Let's go."

"I'll keep to the air," Tony said.

"Almost done triangulating the signal," Natasha reported. "It's coming from another island."

"The three of you, go," Steve ordered. He grabbed Jaya around the waist. "Hold on, kiddo."

"Yup."

The two of them and Bruce high-tailed it into the house and down the stairs. They entered the shelter and JARVIS closed the door. Jaya just closed her eyes and focused on holding the shield.

Steve touched Jaya's cheek. "We're clear. Let go."

She dropped her hands and slumped sideways into Bruce. "Okay. Cool." She closed her eyes, and the universe faded away.

 **A/N 2: To be continued...**


	19. Chapter 19

**A/N: Hi guys! Guess who's finally back from weeks of Writer's Block!**

"Iron Man, come in."

Silence.

"Widow, Hawkeye, come in."

"The energy pulse in the water is probably dampening the signal."

Jaya opened her eyes to the sight of Bruce kneeling next to her, and Steve standing in front of them, hand to his ear comm. She let her gaze drift over to the side, where the native residents had huddled against the wall.

"Hey," Bruce said softly, touching her cheek. "You feel okay?"

"Yeah-ish," Jaya said, sliding up the wall to a sitting position. She pressed her fingertips together to stop them shaking. "What's going on? How long was I out?"

"About an hour. The water has completely covered the island, about twenty feet deep. We can't get in touch with the others, but we're okay."

Jaya nodded slowly. "I can," she flapped her hand at the ceiling.

"We'll keep that option in reserve," Steve said, squeezing her shoulder. "You need to regain your strength."

"Speaking of." Bruce pulled a protein bar out of a drawer. "Here you go."

Besides the sound of her chewing and the sound of the others breathing, the only other sound was the hum of the lights. And a low, ominous creaking coming from above their heads.

Jaya tilted her head up and studied the ceiling.

Another creak and a shifting of metal as something in Tony's house smashed.

"Water is patient," she murmured, remembering the Doctor Who episode. "Water waits." She shivered and nestled into Bruce's side.

He wrapped an arm around her absently. "You okay?"

"Yeah."

Another few minutes passed in absolute silence.

"It's too quiet," Steve decided. "Let's play 20 Questions."

"Really, old man?" came a mocking, familiar voice over comms. "That the best you've got?"

"Tony!" Steve beamed up at the ceiling. "Where are you?"

"We're on our way back to the island," Tony replied. "Found the bad guy, knocked him out, you know the drill."

Natasha murmured something off to the side.

Tony cleared his throat, sounding more solemn. "There is a slight catch."

"Which is?" Steve asked gravely.

"The house, and you guys, are still under twenty feet of water."

"I thought you turned off all the electronic, signal pulse, whatever it was," Steve said.

"We did," Tony said. "But the residual signals defaulted to the nearest source of energy. Which is the house. It's like, uh, magnets. Well, it's not, but you can think of it like that. As long as the power's on, the water's going to converge on that point. It's starting to look more like thirty feet, now."

"JARVIS isn't based here, right?" Steve asked. "So kill the house's power."

Bruce was already shaking his head.

"Here's the thing, Cap," Tony said, sounding extremely apologetic. "If we kill the primary and backup power to the house, safety protocols engage. Which means the hatch to the bunker will open so nobody suffocates in the bunker."

And that twenty feet of water over their heads would come crashing down onto their heads.

Steve's face went ghost-white when the realization hit him, and he leaned against the solid wall of the bunker. "Oh," he said faintly.

"I can hold it," Jaya volunteered. "I can hold the water back long enough for everybody to get out."

"No," Bruce said sharply. "You can barely sit up, you don't have enough energy to hold back that much water."

"I do, too." Jaya sat up indignantly and the entire room rolled around her in a wave of dizziness. She started to tip the other way.

Bruce caught her and pulled her back against his side. "What were you saying?" he asked.

"I just need, like, fifteen more protein bars," Jaya protested, her face smooshed against his shirt. "Then I'm good to go."

"We've got five," Bruce pointed out.

"I can do it," Jaya insisted.

Steve shook off his pallor and shook his head, his eyes still glossy with shock. "No. We just..." he trailed off into silence.

"We have a plan," Tony said, his voice gentle. "You guys get flat on the floor, flat as you can, and hold onto each other. Jaya holds just enough air for you guys to breathe. We cut the power. The water's going to come in, but as soon as it equalizes and goes back in, I can scoop all of you guys up. I've done that before, you just have to hold onto each other. It's like a trust exercise. Five minutes, tops. Three minutes, I'm betting."

"I can do five minutes," Jaya said.

Bruce opened his mouth to protest and then huffed when even he couldn't find an alternate solution.

"Steve?" Tony asked, blatant concern coming over the comm. "You with me, buddy?"

"Yeah," Steve said, squaring his shoulders. "Let's do it."

"All right. We're two minutes away, get ready."

"Copy." Steve straightened up and turned to the civilians, who'd only heard half the conversation. "The other Avengers are coming for us."

He and Bruce explained the whole thing and had everyone get down flat, grabbing wrists and forearms and ankles in secure grips.

"We're in position," Clint said, over comms. "You guys ready?"

The three Avengers laid flat on the edges of the room and grabbed onto their respective wrists/ankles, completing the web. Jaya took a deep breath and made a test bubble. She could hold it. That was okay. "Ready," she said.

"Ready," Steve said.

"Five minutes," Tony promised. "Cutting the power, now."

There was a couple of distant whumps and the power shut off, plunging the room into absolute darkness. A moment later, the overhead hatch dropped down.

Jaya took one last breath as literally a ton of water came rushing down. She let out a full-body wince as the ocean slammed into the eight inches of air she was holding steady.

Nobody screamed or let go of anyone else, so that was good. The water still flooded above their heads, roaring above their ears. And then it was quiet. The room was full of ocean and only Jaya's powers were keeping them from drowning.

Her ears started to ring. On second thought, this was not enough air for this many people. She started to feel lightheaded and closed her eyes. Not like she could see anything, anyway.

A hand squeezed her wrist. Bruce.

Her eyes opened again. Right. Focus. She took another breath. Each breath was harder and harder to grab, and her vision was graying out. "I can't-" she choked.

"It's okay," Steve breathed out. "Don't pass out. One last breath, everybody. Jaya, now."

She took another breath of air and let it go before she passed out.

The water hit them like a reverse belly-flop and Jaya's head bounced against the concrete wall. She coughed out half her air and managed not to breathe any in. But they were now underwater and tangled together, and they had no air.

Jaya blinked again, and wondered if Steve and Hulk were the only ones who would survive this. She couldn't even see them.

In slow-motion, a flash of light dropped through the hatch. And then Iron Man came in, his repulsors disturbing the water and throwing bubbles everywhere. "Uber's here," he announced cheerfully, the sound garbled over the wet comms, and grabbed Steve's free hand. "Upsie-daisies." He hauled, and everyone came with everyone else.

Jaya heaved in a breath of damp, slightly-ozone-y air and the grey edges scaled back. She practically flopped to the sand as Iron Man let everyone down.

Bruce knelt next to her, pressing his fingers to her pulse. "Stay awake, kiddo."

Ten feet away, Tony was coaxing Steve into sitting down. "You good, Steve? You're not gonna flashback or go all comatose on us? Want another cocktail? I can make you a margarita."

Steve let his head drop between his knees, shivering violently in spite of the tropical sun. "You lied," he said, no heat in his words.

"What?" Tony caught a foil blanket thrown at him by Clint and wrapped it around Steve's shoulders.

"Five minutes, thirty-four seconds," Steve mumbled.

Tony huffed a laugh and ruffled Steve's hair. "Thirty-four seconds," he said. "What a disgrace."

Jaya shuffled over to Steve and curled up against his side. "M'cold," she said, trying to get in under the blanket.

He wrapped an arm around her.

Tony looked at Bruce. "You good, Big Guy?" he asked. "Not gonna pass out?"

"I'm fine," Bruce said. "Kinda wet, but fine."

"Good."

The other Avengers let the civilians go back to their homes after promising the bad guy was gone, and they huddled in the quinjet. Tony's mansion house was completely smashed.

"Let's go home," Steve suggested, now huddled next to the heater vent.

"I need a vacation from my vacation," Jaya decided.

Natasha tugged her down onto the bench seat and let Jaya rest her head in the redhead's lap. "We'll do a movie marathon," she promised, and started to run her fingers through Jaya's hair.

"Sounds good."

 **A/N: To be continued. Thanks for sticking with me!**


	20. Chapter 20

**A/N: You thought I'd forgotten about this part, huh?**

"I can hear you, Barton," Hill announced loudly, glaring pointedly up at the vent.

Clint groaned. "Aww." He swung down out of the vent opening and half-heartedly tossed a balloon at her.

She caught the balloon. It was filled with... "Is this slime?" she asked, wrinkling her nose. "Gross. And worse, completely beneath you. If you're going to prank me because I'm not Coulson, I'd appreciate something with a little more style and planning."

"Told you," Natasha sang out as she and Jaya walked through the doorway. The spy put down her phone and stopped recording. "We thought about having Tony misplace your bank accounts, but that was too mean."

"I appreciate it," Hill drawled.

"Did you know that Captain America owns a bedazzler?" Natasha asked innocently, and she and Jaya scarpered.

Clint disappeared a moment later.

Hill's jaw dropped. "No." She bolted towards the apartment attached to her office. Two feet in, she stopped short. "No. Way."

All her pillows and clothing were spread out on the sofas and tables, and they were all covered in sparkly, bedazzled jewels. On the coffee table, on a bedazzled silk cushion, lay a single eyepatch with monstrously vivid jewels. "For dad," said the note in unfamiliar handwriting.

Hill grinned.

AV-AV-AV

"I cannot believe you actually bought that," Tony said to Steve, as the Avengers watched Hill on the screen.

"It was on the television," Steve said, turning wide, innocent blue eyes toward him. "I'd never seen anything like it."

"You troll," Tony accused. "Nobody's watched anything but Netflix for days."

Steve grinned. "No, you're right. I got it off Amazon."

 **A/N 2: First, sorry for the delay in posting this. Also, due to my own health problems as well as work as well as the grave illness of a close friend, I'm sorry to say I've just really lost my inspiration for this story. I don't know where I want Jaya or the Avengers to go from here, and I don't have the mental brain space to deal with it at the moment. I'd rather put this story on a little pause than to try and rush crappy content for both myself and you guys.**

 **However, this story won't be forgotten, it's just simmering. I will pick this up again and continue updating once I can shake out a plot. Thank you guys for your patience, and hope you check out some of my other stories while this one is on pause. I'd put a smiley face but ff never lets them show up lol. Thanks!**

 **EDIT: 7/18/2019: So my friend died early this morning. Everything's definitely going to be put on hold. I'm sad, but I look forward to seeing her again in the resurrection. Thanks for your continued patience.**


	21. Chapter 21

**A/N: Hey, y'all! New year, so far so good. Thank you all for you kind comments. This next chapter is short-ish, more of an interlude as Jaya's arc turns towards college and adulting. See the end of this chapter for my future posts/new stories. Have some IronDad!**

"If I sit on this sofa one second longer I'm going to die," Jaya declared dramatically.

"Then stand up," Natasha said logically.

Jaya stood up, crossed the room, and faceplanted into one of the giant stuffed rabbits that had been dragged into the living room to function as a beanbag. "I'm so bored," she groaned. "I think I'm ready for college."

"What have you decided to do?" Natasha asked.

"Architecture and some sort of Biology," Jaya said. "My two specialties. Maybe a little quantum mechanics on the side."

"It's not an order of fries," Natasha said, amused.

"No, I know, but if I'm gonna be an Avenger I need to know what I'm doing for really reals. And I want to help people all the time, not just during alien events. That means disaster relief and clinics and things like that. The things that happen all the time that Steve can't actually punch into submission."

Natasha snickered. "I'm sure he could punch a hurricane. We should ask him."

They went to Tony instead. "All right!" he said. "Let's do this! I've already got your applications, your scholarship, and your references. All you need to do is sign." He handed her his tablet.

Jaya frowned at the filled-out application. "Where am I sending this?" she asked.

"Since you're a Starklet-"

"We agreed we weren't calling me that."

"-I'm sending you to my alma mater, MIT," Tony said. "You'll love it. And that way you'll be close, too, in case of emergencies." He faltered suddenly, his hands fluttering spastically. "Unless, I mean, where do you wanna go?"

Jaya signed her name, warmth in her heart. "Gotta keep up the legacy, no?" she asked.

He smiled at her.

AV-AV-AV

Of course any protege of Stark's would get into MIT, and of course they would let her do a double major in Architecture and Biology and a minor in astrophysics. "You realize with this course load you're going to be using your powers to reverse your brain from the mush it's going to become," Clint warned her.

"Yeah, probably," Jaya said, with all the nonchalance of youth. "But Tony and Bruce have been teaching me these things for over a year, so I think I've got a little bit of a headstart. And if not, I'll ease up."

"Good. We don't need you getting burnt out, kiddo."

AV-AV-AV

"You want me to have a bodyguard!?"

"Yup."

Jaya crossed her arms. "No."

"Yes," Hill said calmly.

"No."

"You're gonna make Steve do the Sad Puppy Eyes?" Tony asked, pursing his lips.

Jaya paused. Steve's Sad Puppy Eyes were devastating. "No..." she said slowly.

"Good girl. You get a bodyguard."

"Why?" Jaya asked plaintively. "I'm not a child, I can take care of myself."

"I know, kiddo. But you're famous, and famous people need security. Even Steve has security when he goes out."

Jaya scoffed. "He has someone from HR who stops him from signing all the autographs and adopting all the puppies."

"Point being, even Captain America needs someone to keep an eye on him." Tony held out the tablet. "Can you just please go along with this? It'll make Bruce feel much better to know you have backup all the way in the wilds of Massachucetts."

Jaya scowled and took the tablet. "Fine."

"Great. Her name's Laura, you're gonna love her."

"Laura the ex-Black Ops?" Jaya asked, skimming through the woman's record.

"Yup."

Jaya looked up at Hill. "Is she a SHIELD agent?"

"Nope."

"Hm."

AV-AV-AV

"You know, I'm pretty sure me moving into dorms is not newsworthy," Jaya said, cringing away from the hordes of camera phones. "Why did you guys have to come, anyway?"

"It's tradition," Tony stressed, putting an arm around her shoulders. "Family helps you set up in the dorm, thus breaking the ice and embarrassing you in front of your dorm mates. Tradition."

Jaya sighed. "We're already on YouTube."

"Positive Avengers press is always a plus."

"I don't want to be on YouTube."

Tony ushered her into a corner of the hallway where no one could see them. He gripped her forearms. "You're famous kiddo, like it or not. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. I grew up with it, I had to, and now so do you. If it could be otherwise, I would let you go to school in relative anonimity, but you were a superhero before you were a student. I know it's a lot though, especially when you're new at this, so," he sighed. "Just, don't take anything personally, and find some good friends. Sorry. I don't actually have any good advice. I spent my years at MIT blowing things up and trying to get Rhodey drunk. Just, don't be like me. Be like Steve, except without the yelling at racists and conservatives. Actually, don't be like Steve. Be like Thor. Without the willful destruction of property."

Jaya gave him a small smile. "Okay..."

"You good?" he asked, peering at her. "Because if you're not, we can call this whole thing off and we can put you in online classes."

"I'm good," she confirmed. She leaned up and kissed his cheek. "Thank you, Tony."

He smiled at her. "You're gonna do great, kiddo."

 **A/N 2: Thank you for reading! So. Regarding the future of this story: I'm just not in an Avengers frame of mind right now, so updates for this specific story will be slow. If anyone has any requests for adventures they'd like to see College!Jaya have, let me know!**

 **However: if anyone likes Star Trek, I've re-written Ohana Means Familia to be less incidental OC and more plot-like.**

 **Also, guys, once my beta readers are done with my draft, I'm going to start publishing my multi-volume massive universe crossover that I have been working on for the last six years. The first volume of the story starts in Star Trek: The Original Series, and will eventually cross into... quite a few others. Hopefully once it passes my beta readers, I'll start posting that one soon, so be on the lookout for that.**

 **I'm also going to attempt the process of self-publishing this year, so ... lots of things to look forward to for 2020. Thank you to everyone who's read/reviewed/favorited so far! (sorry for such long notes)**


	22. Chapter 22

**A/N: Hey, look at that, it's an update! Have some snapshots of Jaya's first term at college!**

"Hey,"

"No."

The young man (hot young man) melted away into the ether, suitably cowed by Laura the ex-Black Ops' firm statement and cold glare.

"Laura!" Jaya complained, mortified.

"Absolutely not," Laura the ex-Black Ops said. "He was definitely not looking for a meaningful relationship with you."

"What if he wanted the notes to class?"

"He's not in any of your classes."

Jaya gaped at her. "You've memorized the class lists for all my classes?"

"Yes, I have."

Jaya sighed. "You're serious."

"Very." Laura the ex-Black Ops' face softened. "My job is to protect you, Jaya, not as the youngest Avenger, but as a person in a position of high fame. I don't want anyone, not teachers, not students, to take advantage of you in any way. You're here to learn and have a good time and make friends and possibly change the world if you want, and my job is to let you do that. Without the suspicious dudes on this campus."

One could not help but be moved by Laura the ex-Black Ops's sincerity. "Fine," Jaya said. "Thank you."

"And because the rest of the Avengers would behead me if I let anything happen to you," Laura the ex-Black Ops added, winking at her.

Jaya rolled her eyes. "Oh of course, can't forget the beheadings."

"And can you just call me Laura, please?"

Jaya froze and glanced at her. "Uhhh, wha?"

"You think I can't see you saying Ex-Black Ops, with capital letters, every time you say my name?" Laura the Ex-, wait, no, said with a smirk.

Jaya refused to blush. "I plead the fifth."

"Uh-huh." Laura The, ahem, Laura glanced at her watch. "You have orientation in twenty minutes."

AV-AV-AV

"So, you're like a superhero, right?"

"Um, sort of." Jaya cleared her throat. "So, did you read the syllabus?"

"Yeah, it's online. So, do the Avengers all really live in Stark Tower? Are Captain America and Black Widow together? Have you seen the Hulk un-Hulked? Did you-"

Jaya stared at the guy plopped down next to her. "Are you serious right now?"

He stopped talking. "Sorry." He slid a piece of paper across the table. "Can I have your autograph?"

"Um, no."

"Why not?"

"This is mechanical engineering, not comic-con. I'm not a celebrity."

"You're an Avenger," he said, his tone reverent. "And you're hot."

"Ooookay." Jaya picked up her bag and moved seats.

He glared at the back of her head for the next two hours and forty-five minutes.

AV-AV-AV

"Can I rewind time and not sign up for classes before ten?" Jaya groaned, dragging herself to class.

"I don't know," Laura said. "Can you?"

Jaya blinked. "Uh... next break I'll think about it. Probably not, though."

AV-AV-AV

"You're Tony Stark's protege, shouldn't you know all this already?"

"That's why I'm here, to learn."

"But you're his kid, right? Didn't you get any of his genes?"

Jaya stared at her lab partner. "No? He's my legal guardian."

"Tomayto, tomahto." The dude didn't shake his gaze. "So your mom a supermodel or something?"

Jaya took a deep breath. "My parents died a few years ago in a car crash."

"Oh. Sorry." He turned back to the lab equipment.

Jaya took another deep breath and got back to work.

AV-AV-AV

"...why do you have a litterbox in here? You have a cat?"

Jaya laughed. "No, it's a sandbox. I use it to practice finetuning my, uh, skills."

Jasmine wiggled her fingers expressively. "Skills, right, gotcha. That's so cool. Hey, do you use Jenga blocks, too?"

"Jenga?" Jaya repeated.

"Yeah, it's a falling block game, uh, here." Jasmine stood up, study guide cast aside. "Come on, engineering students need to know how to play Jenga."

They found a lounge with a Jenga game and played. Once it fell, Jaya reversed it back to its previous precarious position.

"That's so cool," Jasmine said, eyes wide.

"Thanks."

"Go again?"

"Sure." Jaya added Jenga to her shopping list. This would be great at the Tower.

AV-AV-AV

 **A/N 2: Gonna be moving into the events of Thor: TDW next chapter, once it gets written. Stay safe, everyone!**


	23. Chapter 23

"You couldn't possibly build that in real life, the wind shear alone would-"

A loud shrieking and groaning of overtaxed architecture ripped through the air, followed by screams.

Jaya scrambled from her seat out the lounge, heading for the screams, Laura on her heels.

They rounded the corner to see one of the older dorm buildings collapsing in on itself.

Jaya threw her hands out and froze the entire building. "Get everyone out!" she yelled, locking her knees. If she tried to reverse it now, The Cask of Amontillado would be only a precursor to the horror. "Everyone has to be out!" she screamed at the shocked students as they gathered to gawp at her. "Stop filming and go!"

"How long can you hold that?" Laura asked, her dark gaze assessing.

"As long as I need to." Jaya took a measured breath and let it out slowly. "Emergency services? And we're gonna need thermal scanning to sweep the building."

"Ten minute ETA," Laura said.

"Okay. Go. I'm fine."

Laura grabbed the nearest student. "You! Keep an eye on her. If she starts shaking or looking pale you need to feed her. Understood?"

"Uh, okay. Cool."

Laura ran off to do Ex-Black-Ops stuff.

"So how are you doing that?" Jaya's new babysitter asked, after an awkward pause.

"I put the building into anentropy."

"Cool. I'm Tracy, by the way."

"Hi."

The police, firefighters, and the National Guard contingent showed up within a half hour. It was already dark.

"How are you doing?" Tracy asked, as they watched the rescue efforts.

"I'm surprisingly okay," Jaya replied. "It's actually a little freaky that it's this easy."

"Is that bad?"

"I'm not looking this gift horse in the mouth," Jaya said firmly.

Another hour passed. Jaya still felt fine, oddly detached from the chaos or the crowd of onlookers.

The rescue efforts stalled out on the bottom two floors. "There's some sort of weird effect going on," Laura reported back. "Maybe an invention gone wrong, they can't get through. We might need the Avengers."

"And that's my cue," a familiar voice announced as a red and gold figure dropped to the ground. He popped the faceplate and grinned. "You're having a party and I had to find out from the national news? A quick text would have been fine."

Jaya sighed in relief. "Tony."

"JARVIS, how's she doin?"

"Vitals are stable," JARVIS reported.

Jaya pointed with her chin. "Go help. I'm good."

He grinned. "You got it, boss." He winked at the starstruck Tracy and zoomed off to do something science-y and probably dangerous.

"Tony Stark winked at me," Tracy whispered to herself.

Tony reported through the comm a minute later. "Looks like a gravity well condensing down to eight g's. I can't even get close to the center without turning into a pancake. It's pulling the building like a black hole would - how are you not exhausted?"

"I don't know, but I'm trying not to focus on that," Jaya replied. "How do we stop it?"

"It doesn't look like it's artificially generated," Tony replied dubiously.

"So, what, a superdense gravity field just appeared?" Laura asked skeptically.

"I don't know, and I don't like it."

Something crunched in the depths of the dorm. "Wait," Tony said, voice tense. "The readings, J, back me up are they-"

"The gravity has returned to normal," JARVIS agreed.

"Let's wait a second," Tony murmured.

They waited, and nothing changed.

"Okay," Tony said, "I guess you can put everything back, Jaya. Easy does it."

Jaya focused on rewinding the dorm to its previous state. It was a long half hour. "Done," she said, and sat down on the pavement, suddenly tired.

Tracy shoved a protein shake into her hands. "Here."

Tony flew back to their position. "Kiddo? You all right?"

"Yeah, no, I'm fine," Jaya mumbled through the chocolate shake. "Weirdly not passing out."

"Hm. I wonder why. JARVIS?"

"Her vitals show no significant differences besides general tiredness."

"It felt really easy," Jaya said. "I didn't have to strain to control it, like I had to do with the water, or the other things I tried to freeze."

Tony frowned. "Jaya, I think you should come home for the weekend. JARVIS, call Bruce, tell him to be on the lookout for anomalies like this. Notify SHIELD, too. Who else is there?"

"Dr. Jane Foster is researching gravitational anomalies in relation to the Bifrost," JARVIS volunteered.

"Good, call her, too." He turned to Laura. "Let's go wrap this up and get out of here."

"Thanks, bye," Jaya called to Tracy as Laura helped her get up and walk towards the assembled authorities. "Tony, I want a cheeseburger. Two cheeseburgers."

He laughed. "We'll get you a burger, don't worry." His smile went from fond to charming as he faced the assembled police officers and reporters. "Gentlemen."

Within an hour, they were on their way to New York.

Jaya fell asleep halfway through her second cheeseburger and only woke up when Bruce touched her shoulder. "Huh?"

"Shh, just me," Bruce said, giving her a smile. "Hi. Welcome home."

She hugged him tightly. "Bruce."

"You okay to stand?" he asked, looking her over for injuries.

"I'm good," Jaya said, getting to her feet and stretching her arms. "Just tired."

"Okay. Can you stay awake for a debrief?"

"Yeah."

He walked her to the Avengers common room and installed her on the sofa with another protein shake.

"Okay," Steve said, giving her a bracing smile, "what happened?"

Jaya recounted her experience.

"Well, I'm never sleeping again," Clint said, once she was done.

"Like you sleep anyways," Natasha retorted in a devastating tone.

He gaped at her, betrayed.

Jaya snickered. She watched the conversation circle around as Tony and Bruce spitballed ideas, but the couch was soft and she was a uni student, you know, she was chronically sleep-deprived...she fell asleep.


End file.
